Savonlinna’s new Nabucco highlights the generation gap: “The fight for nature is the war of our time”

Olavinlinna all the space in the narrow corridors has been put to good use, as the dressing and masking facilities required by modern opera productions have been built there.

In one corner, a washing machine and a dryer are humming, the utilization rate of which must be very close to one hundred percent when the opera festival season starts, when rehearsals and performances are going on.

On Thursday evening, the Savonlinna opera festival was about to begin Nabucco-opera dress rehearsal, and before that opera costume and set designer, Takis-working under a stage name Panagiotis Chatoupis introduced opera costumes.

The parties to the war depicted in the opera are already clear from the costumes: Nabucco’s protagonist and henchmen wear royal blue and gold, his enemies’ costumes are desert-brown cotton.

In suits there are historical elements reminiscent of the opera’s time, but adapted to new forms.

“I call it de-reconstruction,” says Takis. “I first want to deconstruct an era and then reconstruct it.”

In other words, it’s about the fact that Takis disassembles the characteristic features of the era in each work into parts, and after analyzing them, assembles something new from the pieces.

The features are not only the visual characteristics of the costumes, but Takis wants to look more generally at the aesthetic, historical and political features of the era.

“It’s about understanding the era. Why was the silhouette of a suit just like this, and how was it related to the politics of the time – or the dances of the era. Especially in the last century, costumes changed according to popular dances. Everything was related to how the body moves in, say, Charleston.”

The business is also central in an opera performance, where the costumes must work reliably and naturally when the singers are acting. On the other hand, it would be good to convey strong characterization and a general look that supports the story told by the opera to the audience.

“I don’t want to make museum objects, you can go see them in a museum. Instead, I aim to stimulate the audience visually so that they feel they are seeing something fresh and special.”

Takis says he finds freshness by using modern materials and technologies even when he is working on a work set in a historical era – like now Nabucco.

Giuseppe Verdin Nabucco is the novelty production of the Savonlinna Opera Festival this summer. The story of Nabucco, one of Verdi’s most popular operas, is based on events in Jerusalem and Babylon about 600 years before the beginning of time, as told in the Old Testament.

Visual elements from more than 2,000 years ago can be seen in Takis’ costumes and sets, but as a modern interpretation. Most of the sets are made of recycled materials, which is partly reflected by the director Rodula Gaitanoun a new interpretation of the work.

This time Nabucco is seen as climate change and eco-activism themed. The religious war between Israelis and Assyrians depicted in the opera turns into a battle between climate activists and technocrats in Gaitanou and Takis’ interpretation.

Supervisor Rodula Gaitanou says that the generational gap is visible in this conflict.

He got the idea for the interpretation after talking with his twenty-something stepchild about how thoroughly young people feel that the older generations have failed them in terms of global warming and how hopeless the future of young people looks.

Therefore, in this interpretation, the focus of the battle is not Jehovah but mother earth, and therefore the Assyrians grasping for wealth are elderly people walking with walking sticks.

“The fight for nature is the war of our time”, Takis justifies the reinterpretation.

“We are describing two different peoples here: one, subjugated, is essentially very reduced and pure, the other is exuberant and power-hungry,” says Gaitanou.

Gaitanou and Takis have already worked together in about ten different productions, and during that time they have developed a close professional relationship.

“Takis is my spiritual and artistic brother,” says Gaitanou. “We have developed a relationship that goes beyond verbal communication – we have developed a common dream world, which is very rare.”

By shared dream world, he means that they have similar aesthetic views, even though they have developed separately from each other.

“It’s mainly about subconscious images that we both get,” says Gaitanou. “They can be very similar, or we can develop them alternately.”

Takis agrees. “This dream world is not an isolated case, but we have built our own image to which we are constantly adding things. We don’t start a new project from scratch.”

The common denominator of this aesthetic vision, the world of dreams, is a fairy-tale quality and timelessness, which is created with the help of, for example, the de-reconstruction thinking mentioned by Takis.

With it, it is possible to avoid a strict attachment to a certain era or place, be it the Babylon of the Old Testament or the Savonlinna of the 2020s.

“This way we are able to speak to today’s audience, but also create a timeless character for the work. It is concrete and dreamlike at the same time,” says Takis.

About the outfit Takis lands on the stage, where a tall stage structure has been erected to await the start of the dress rehearsal.

A good number of recycled bottles reflect on the structure’s surface, and its contours are emphasized by LED strips installed in the corners, where the light motifs progress in many different ways throughout the work.

The idea of ​​using recycled materials arose from a self-set challenge to see how green an opera production can really be.

According to Takis, it is still not possible to be completely carbon neutral and produce a sufficiently high-quality stage image from only recycled materials, but on the other hand, the realization of such a high recycling rate requires a relatively advanced recycling system in a country like Finland – which Takis is very impressed by.

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“Maybe you in Finland don’t quite realize how special this festival and place are.”

Likewise is directed by Rodula Gaitanou. The working group has prepared Nabucco-production on site in Olavinlinna for about a month, since the beginning of summer.

“Maybe you in Finland don’t quite realize how special this festival and place are,” says Gaitanou.

“Every time we go to practice and come out, we are completely amazed by the beauty of nature and the history of this place. The history of the castle has been violent and bloodthirsty, and it is surrounded by nature of a very special quality. And it seems to me that all this has some connection on a deeper level Nabuccoon.”

The premiere of Nabucco is on Saturday 6.7. and there are performances on 26.7. until. The Savonlinna Opera Festival starts on Friday 5 July. At the Lohengrin opera. The festival continues on August 4. until.