Arnas Launis - Aslak Hetta (Opera in Three Acts)

Armas LAUNIS (1884-1959)

Aslak Hetta - Opera in Three Acts (1922)

Aki Alamikkotervo (tenor)

Ilkka Hämäläinen (tenor)

Anna-Kristiina Kaappola (soprano)

Arttu Kataja (bass)

Tuomas Katajala (tenor)

Jaakko Kortekangas (baritone)

Raimo Laukka (baritone)

Kai Lehtinen (narrator)

Tiina Penttinen (mezzo-soprano)

Eeva-Liisa Saarinen (mezzo-soprano)

Raili Viljakainen (soprano)

Lassi Virtanen (tenor)

Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Kampin Laulu Chamber Choir

YL Male Voice Choir

Sakari Oramo

Recorded at the House of Culture, Helsinki, March 8-13, 15, 18-19, 2004

This is a fabulous performance of a remarkably enjoyable work. Armas Launis (1884-1959) is barely a footnote in the history of music, and only two of his ten operas were performed in his lifetime. His style was definitely eclectic and he had a penchant for exoticism - Aslak Hetta draws on a famous historical incident (at least in Scandinavia) concerning a Sami uprise against the Norwegian local rulers in 1852; other operas are apparently set in different parts of the world, and apparently Launis would draw on the folk music, or at least the color of the folk music, of the people at the relevant location. He did indeed collect Sami folk music himself prior to composing Aslak Hetta, and it does imbue the work with a certain color and melodic and harmonic profile that doesn't really sound like anything else, but I cannot really shake of the suspicion of superficiality - certainly the Norwegian elements he use are very standard (the tunes should be well-known to people acquainted with the music of Grieg and Svendsen). But then, why should listeners really care as long as the end result is as colorful and effective as it is here?

But even if the style is eclectic, the influences are well integrated and the music doesn't come across as a sequence of mere copies of other composers. The style is broadly post-Wagnerian, and there are elements of Italian verismo thrown in, as well as Grieg and elements that sound almost like early Bartok. The music is muscular, red-blooded and vigorous, relatively direct and often "raw", perhaps not particularly subtle but very well constructed with some wonderfully sustained climaxes and some wonderfully evocative, pictorial sequences. The thematic material, often striking in itself, is imaginatively used and the opera exhibits a consistently high level of invention.

The performances are spectacular, more so for the thrilling fervor and intensity they bring to the work than for refinement, perhaps, but both Viljakainen as the title character and Kaappola as Agni (two singers I have to admit to not being previously familiar with) provide very convincing and usually finely sung performances. The supporting cast is generally strong. What makes this set such a success, however, is above all the powerful, colorful and glitteringly brilliant orchestral playing. The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra sounds like a world class ensemble here, giving us playing of smoldering intensity, opulent textures and flair throughout, and Oramo directs them with what I can only assume is a very deep commitment to and understanding of the work. The recorded quality is superb, perfectly balanced between soloists, chorus and orchestra, rich and crystal clear. In short, this very attractive work receives as good advocacy as one could possibly have hoped for, and although the work might not in the end quite be on the level of Merikanto's Juha, say, it is still a thoroughly important addition to the catalogue; very strongly recommended.

Amazon Reviewer

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About Aslak Hetta and the Kautokeino Rebellion

On October 14th, 1854, two Sami men were beheaded for Norway’s Kautokeino Rebellion.

The indigenous Sami people — often known as Lapps, although this nomenclature is not preferred by the Sami themselves — had by this point become territorially assimilated to the states of the Scandinavian peninsula across which their ancestral homeland had once spanned.

The material benefits of this association for the Sami were much less apparent.

In Norway , Sami shared little of the economic growth in the 19th century save for a startling proliferation of alcoholism.

In the 1840s a charismatic Sami preacher named Lars Levi Laestadius founded a Lutheran revival movement that went over like reindeer among his people. Religious enthusiasm and social critique went hand in hand: Laestadius’s hard anti-alcohol line and criticism of the comfortable state clergy touched deeply felt grievances, and Laestadius could deliver these messages in Sami dialects. Villages devastated by drink would go dry in response to his exhortations with pleasing results for the social fabric, further stoking adherents’ piety.

The most militant expression of this movement soon detached itself from any restraint Lars Levi Laestadius might hope to exercise upon it. Eventually it would move towards disruptive actions like interrupting services of the official clergy and protesting licensed alcohol merchants.

In a rising in November 1852, firebrand Laestadians attacked the trading post of Carl Johan Ruth, the liquor merchant in the Finnmark village of Kautokeino. Both Ruth and the local sheriff, responding to the disturbance, were slain in the ensuing fray and several other buildings in town torched. A counterattack managed to quell the disturbance — killing two rebels in turn — and eventually 17 men and 11 women were condemned to sentences ranging from short prison terms to lifelong prison terms to (our concern, of course) execution.

The two leaders of the mob, Aslak Hetta and Mons Somby, were both beheaded at the Arctic Circle town of Alta.

After decapitation, the men’s bodies were buried at Alta’s Kafjorddalen Church, but their severed heads went off to the Royal Fredrik’s University (today the University of Oslo) for scientists to probe. The heads eventually went missing until a search turned them up at a cranium collection in Copenhagen in 1997, which returned them at the behest of the descendants for burial back with the trunks from which they parted ways 160 years ago today.

A 2008 Nils Gaup-directed feature film, The Kautokeino Rebellion, dramatizes these events. Armas Launis, a Finnish composer with an interest in ethnography, also wrote a libretto in honor of Aslak Hetta after residing among the Sami for some time.