Based on "Juha"
by Juhani Aho Composer Leevi Madetoja Language Finnish | First performance 17 February 1935 Librettist Aino Ackté Adapted from Juha | |
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Premiere 17 February 1925 (1925-02-17)
Finnish National Opera, Helsinki People also search for The Ostrobothnians, Aino, Maiden of the North, The Last Temptations | ||
Juha, Op. 74, is an opera in 3 acts (6 tableaux) by the Finnish composer Leevi Madetoja, who composed the work between 1931 and 1934. The libretto is a collaboration between Madetoja and Aino Ackté, based on a novel by Juhani Aho by the same name. The score calls for 3 sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass, and orchestra. On 17 February 1935, the opera premiered at the Finnish National Opera. The opera was initially a success, although it never reached the popularity of Madetoja first opera, The Ostrobothnians. Today, it is rarely performed and has been supplanted by Aarre Merikanto's 1922 version, which is based on the same libretto.
History
For Madetoja, the 1930s brought hardship and disappointment. During this time, he was at work on two new major projects: a second opera, Juha, and a fourth symphony, each to be his final labor in their respective genres. The former, with a libretto by the famous Finnish soprano, Aino Ackté (adapted from the 1911 novel by writer Juhani Aho), had fallen to Madetoja after a series of events: first, Sibelius—ever the believer in "absolute music"—had refused the project in 1914; and, second, in 1922, the Finnish National Opera had rejected a first attempt by Aarre Merikanto as "too Modernist" and "too demanding on the orchestra", leading the composer to withdraw the score. Two failures in, Ackté thus turned to Madetoja, the successful The Ostrobothnians of whom was firmly ensconced in the repertoire, to produce a safer, more palatable version of the opera.
The death of Madetoja's mother, Anna, on 26 March 1934, interrupted his work on the opera; the loss so devastated Madetoja that he fell ill and could not travel to Oulu for the funeral. Madetoja completed work on the opera by the end of 1934 and it premiered to considerable fanfare at the Finnish National Opera on 17 February 1935, the composer's forty-eighth birthday. The critics hailed it as a "brilliant success", an "undisputed masterpiece of Madetoja and Finnish opera literature". Nevertheless, the "euphoria" of the initial performance eventually wore off and, to the composer's disappointment, Juha did not equal the popularity of The Ostrobothnians. Indeed, today Juha is most associated with Merikanto, whose modernist Juha (first performed in the 1960s) is the more enduringly popular of the two; having been displaced by Merikanto's, Madetoja's Juha is rarely performed.