Juha (Madetoja)
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| Juha | |
|---|---|
| Opera by Leevi Madetoja | |
 The composer (c. 1937) | |
| Librettist | Leevi Madetoja & Aino Ackté |
| Language | Finnish |
| Based on | Juha by Juhani Aho |
| Premiere | |
Juha, Op. 74, is a verismo opera in three acts—comprising six tableaux—written from 1931 to 1934 by the Finnish composer Leevi Madetoja. The libretto, a collaboration between Madetoja and the Finnish soprano Aino Ackté, is based on Juhani Aho's 1911 novel by the same name. The story takes place on the border between West Karelia (Finno-Swedish territory) and East Karelia (Russian territory), and features as its central conflict a love triangle between the farmer Juha, his young wife Marja, and a Karelian merchant, Shemeikka. Disillusioned with rural life and seduced by promises of material comfort and romance, Marja runs away with Shemeikka; Juha, who maintains his wife has been abducted, eventually discovers her betrayal and commits suicide by jumping into the rapids.
On 17 February 1935, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra premiered the work at the Finnish National Opera under the baton of Armas Järnefelt. Although a success at its premiere, Juha failed to match the popularity of Madetoja's first opera, The Ostrobothnians; enthusiasm quickly faded and the inaugural production was discontinued in February 1938, after 13 performances. Despite two mini-revivals in Madetoja's lifetime, he considered it the greatest disappointment of his career. Today, the opera is rarely performed and has been supplanted in the operatic repertoire by Aarre Merikanto's modernist 1922 version (first performed in 1963), which is based upon the same libretto.
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),[1] had fallen to Madetoja after a series of events: first, Sibelius—ever the believer in "absolute music"—had refused the project in 1914;[2][a] 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.[4][b] 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.[4]
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.[6][7][c] 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".[6] 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 (which the Finnish National Opera performed on 19 October 1967) is the more enduringly popular of the two; having been displaced by Merikanto's, Madetoja's Juha is rarely performed.[6][4]
Roles
Juha comprises a cast of eleven roles, of which five are for male and six are for female voice types; tableaux 4–6 also include mixed choir. The principal characters are Juha (baritone), his wife Marja (soprano), and her seducer Shemeikka (tenor).
| Roles | Character description | Appearances | Voice type | Premiere cast 17 February 1935 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Juha | A backwoods Finnish farmer and the husband of Marja | Tableaux 1, 3, 6 | baritone | Toivo Louko |
| Marja | Juha's young wife | Tableaux 1–2, 4, 6 | soprano | Irja Aholainen |
| Shemeikka of Uhtua | A proposperous Karelian peddler | Tableaux 1–2, 4–6 | tenor | Alfons Almi |
| The Mother-in-law (Anoppi) | Juha's mother | Tableaux 1, 3 | contralto | Lahja Linko |
| Kaisa | A servant girl on Juha's farm | soprano | Karin Ehder | |
| The Vicar (Rovasti) | The parish clergyman who married Juha and Marja | Tableau 3 | bass | Bruno Jorma |
| Anja | A former summer sweetheart of Shemeikka's | Tableaux 4, 6 | soprano | Mary Hannikainen |
| First girl (Ensimäinen tyttö) | Tableau 4 | Airi Osa | ||
| Second girl (Toinen tyttö) | contralto | Martta Seppälä | ||
| First man (Ensimäinen mies) | A companion in Shemeikka's entourage | Tableaux 4–6 | tenor | Emil Mantila |
| Second man (Toinen mies) | bass | Erkki Eklund | ||
| Chorus | Men and women in Shemeikka's entourage | SATB | ? | |
