A Finnair flight attendant became an opera star at the Savonlinna Opera Festival

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Savonlinna Opera Festival on July 4. Henry Akina’s direction was warmed up by Riikka Räsänen, set design by Dean Shibuya, conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi, in the main roles, among others. Silja Aalto and Anthony Ciaramitaro.

On it’s just nice to have a good time, get a piece in your throat at just the right places and wipe the debris from your eyes moved after a familiar opera direction.

That’s what happened around where I was sitting, suddenly looking at a few others as well, when Henry Akinan control Puccini’s Madama Butterfly -opera returned to Savonlinna again.

I’m the last one yesterday saddened how in Savonlinna the heatings of the old controls are rather watered down compared to the original intensity.

Now I’m not complaining.

Riga Räsänen warmed up to Akina’s working concept as a director, starting a little cautiously. In the end, however, the show built up an intensity that was completely comparable to the first year of directing 2009 and for years 2014 and 2018which I have evaluated this production.

Also Dean Shibuyan the staging has taken time. It was made specifically for the Olavinlinna and works much better than the one seen the night before and designed for the needs of the Semperoper in Dresden The Marriage of Figaro.

Succeeded the evening was crowned by a soprano who made her role debut Silja Aaltowho was a Finnair flight attendant five years ago.

Nowadays, she comes across almost every female lead in a Produktion on our main stages (Don Carlos and Mother of nature at the National Opera, The last temptations and now Madama Butterfly at the Savonlinna Opera Festival).

Every time he has been better than the last time I heard him. Especially the end of Butterfly was a really impressive piece of art.

At first, he saved his vocal resources and seemed to be still getting used to his new role. But gradually the wonderful pianissimos, thunderous enough but completely controlled climaxes and towards the end also the increasingly internalized acting made a great impression.

If he gets a similar intensity in the coming evenings also at the beginning of the opera and a splash of the fullness of Italian red wine in his tones between quieter passages and climaxes, you’d think that international interest would grow as well.

He already has such a nice, slightly exotic Butterfly sound.

Aalto by no means set out to become a singer after finishing the piano and violin lessons of his teenage years. She studied to be a travel restaurateur and started working as a flight attendant in 2005 at Finnair.

In a small phone interview earlier this week, he said the following: when a friend wanted to join the choir, he agreed to join and got so excited that he took singing lessons and finally decided to acquire another profession by studying vocal pedagogy at a university of applied sciences.

The soloist’s dreams didn’t really wake up until 2009, when Aalto was in the opera festival choir for the first summer, for example in this very Madama Butterflyn in guidance.

That same summer Eglise Gutierrez sang in Lucia de Lammermoor in a way that the young flight attendant began to dream about herself.

Another six years passed, and finally in 2015 he got into the Sibelius Academy’s opera training program. A year later, he won the Toivo Kuula singing competition and later also a competition in New York.

The flight attendant’s work gradually became part-time and in 2021 she resigned from Finnair.

The risk was worth it. There are also international jobs, for example London’s BBC Proms, Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra as a soloist, Toulouse, Rouen and many roles in the Estonia Theater in Estonia.

Aalto wasn’t the only reason to be happy about Butterfly’s return.

In Savonlinna, we again got a really voolassing Italian-style tenor for the Puccini role. Born in Florida Anthony Ciaramitaro was the suitably thoughtless officer Pinkerton, who wants to play with Geisha regardless of the fact that she is, at least according to his words, only a 15-year-old child (this is often suspected in the controls to soften the shock effect). And even a child who takes the marriage ritual seriously.

Tommi Hakala instead, there was the somewhat priest-like Consul Sharpless, who shuddered at Pinkerton’s frivolity. The role suited him both as an actor and a singer perfectly.

The Suzuki attendant was reliable Emilia Rukavina and the role of the pimp Goro was played by a fixed tone Tuomas Miettolawho played Butterfly’s grown-up son beautifully a few years ago in Finnish contemporary opera. Now he redeemed his promises also in the Italian opera classic. There were good successes in smaller roles as well.

I scolded just yesterday from the orchestra’s clattering and rhythmically lapping Mozart- call.

Now the orchestra and the choir were at a significantly higher level, thanks to the conductor Pier Giorgio Morandin and choir master Jan Schweigerin.

The orchestra has experienced a generational change and is still not at its most unified, but the direction is now right.

And of course, the biggest thanks goes to the composer Puccini, who, considering the time, worked hard on Japanese culture and music (Nagasaki remembers him with a statue of Puccini, with a butterfly sitting on his shoulder, of course).

First performed in 1904 Madama Butterfly is a problematic masterpiece about a turning point in history where Japan too had begun its own imperialist expansionist efforts.

Interestingly, this opera both reproduces Western colonialism and criticizes it quite frankly.

Madama Butterfly at the Savonlinna Opera Festival Until July 23.

Correction July 5 at 17:05: Corrected the name of child actor Otso Markkanen in the caption. His first name was previously misspelled as Otto in the caption. Also corrected a typo in the name of the character Goro and a mention of Puccini’s trip to Japan. The composer familiarized himself with the subject with the help of Japanese sources, but he is not known to have traveled to Japan.