Joonas Kokkonen - The Last Temptations

Joonas KOKKONEN (1921-1996)

THE LAST TEMPTATIONS

Opera in Two Acts

Libretto Lauri Kokkonen

 Martti Talvela (bass) Paavo Ruotsalainen; 

Ritva Auvinen (sop) Riitta; 

Seppo Ruohonen (ten) Juhana; 

Marti Lehtinen (bar) Jaakko Hogman; 

Marita Nordberg (spkr) Anna Loviisa; 

Liisamaija Laaksonen (spkr) Albertina Nennonen; 

Kalevi Koskinen (ten) First man; 

Jorma Faick (bar) Second man; 

Jaakko Ryhänen (bass) Third man; 

Tarn Valjakka (sop) First woman; 

Eini Liukko-Vaara (mez) Second woman; 

Raija Määtthnen-Falck (alto) Third woman;

Savonlinna Opera Festival Chorus and Orchestra
Ulf Söderblom.


Joonas Kokkonen belongs to the same generation as Robert Simpson and Peter Racine Fricker, and is undoubtedly the leading symphonist of the older generation in Finland. But he is probably better known to the wider public outside Finland for this opera than for his orchestral works which are seldom heard in concert programmes and relatively rarely broadcast. (Elsewhere in this issue I review the first CD, comprising the Cello Concerto and the Fourth Symphony, in a BIS project to record all his orchestral output.)
The Last Temptations was his first work for the stage and remains his only opera. Begun in 1959, as Pekka Hako reminds us in the accompanying notes, it occupied the composer for the best part of 16 years. It was produced to great acclaim in Helsinki in 1975, has been staged at the Met and came briefly to Sadler's Wells, where I recall seeing it. It was published on three Deutsche Grammophon LPs not long afterwards. Its appearance was greeted without much enthusiasm by AW who had not seen the stage performance in London but thought that the music on its own, "insufficiently strong and characterful to do full justice to its dramatic subject-matter" and complained of its "bland consonance. When Kokko nen has to construct extended monologues for Ruotsalainen," he wrote, "the thinness of the music is all too evident". Mind you, that can be said of most operas after Britten including many that have excited great critical acclaim. Poverty of invention is easier to disguise when the norm of dissonance is high.
The central character in the action, Paavo Ruotsalainen (1777-1852), headed a protest movement against the dogmatic orthodoxes of the day (one might perhaps best speak of him as a revivalist), and his inner struggles are the theme of the opera. Martti Talvela, who sings this role, completely dominates the scene. The score has many moments of real power, though I would not dissent from AW's view that the music does not altogether work dramatically. Kokkonen's invention has an essential continuity of thought that is symphonic rather than dramatic; but it remains in the same tonal area for too long at a time and the range of musical devices is too limited over the time-scale involved. It is prone to repetition, some of the harmonic progressions appear too often, and as in the Fourth Symphony and the Cello Concerto some ideas tinged with a sweetness close to unctuousness.

From Gramophone Review

More Info about The Last Temptattions including a Synopsis

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