Sallinen: The Red Line [DVD] [2012]

I love Sallinen's music and this opera in particular. I attended the opening night of the revival in 2007 on which this recording is based. The cast is the same, only the agitator has changed. (An earlier recording of a Finnish TV broadcast exists privately,(no subtitles), but this new production is very much better and the only recording on DVD). What a shame it is not on Blu-ray!. The staging is very clever enabling the many short scenes to blend seamlessly, and the singing is just magnificent. How a small country like Finland manages to produce so many outstandong singers is a mystery but how lucky we are to have them. Every member of this cast is superb, including the three children. The interviews on this disc are most interesting, unfortunately the English subtitles that attend Jorma Hynninen's interview slip and finally run out so that unless you speak Finnish the last question is unanswered.
It is really time to get all Sallinen's 6 operas on video and in this day and age it should be Blu-ray. This opera is one of the greatest operas of the last 100 years and stands right up there with Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk, Katya Kabanova and Billy Budd. Sallinen is the most outstanding living writer of opera and it is a tragedy he is so poorly represented in the catalogue. Finnish is not a language most of us speak but it is a beautiful singing language and as the interviews demonstrate has a most attractive spoken intonation as well. Like all great composers, Sallinen writes with his own signature and once heard his music is instantly recognisable even if you have not heard that piece before. His orchestration is somewhat like Shostakovich in that a huge range of instruments get a chance to shine in an original way, his music is tonal and easy on the ear whilst adding colour and drama to the moment. If you like 20th century opera then treat yourself to this splendid disc. A special thank you to Ondine - can we have more please! The Palace (Palatsi) is also available on a very good, (but 4:3), DVD and is most enjoyable. I attended that performance too and it is a wonderful memory of another great Sallinen night. Another reviewer has complained about the picture quality. I found it excellent and exactly reflected the two evenings I was there. The lighting is deliberately tinted towards blue to accentuate the tragic setting of the story.
Better late than never but The Red Line is a masterpiece and one of Finland's national treasures!

Sallinen is perhaps the greatest living opera composer, and "The Red Line" has claims to be perhaps his most important work in the genre. It counterpoints National resurgence in Finland against the Russian Bear with the tragic privation suffered by many Finnish people at the time, and is both heartrending and uplifting - with a fantastic score worthy to rank with the best operas of Britten, Shostakovich and Tippett (though Sallinen has his own, very personal Nordic palette and style).

I was fortunate enough to see the original production, and it is marvellous to see the great Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen still playing the leading role over thirty years later - his singing is still amazingly powerful, but now he has a physical fragility which conveys even more the contradictory elements of Topi's personality, and the opera gains power as a result.

The rest of the cast is marvellous, as is the conducting. The production is stylised, less social-realist than the original Finnish National Opera 1978 staging, but clear, pointed and imaginative.

The DVD picture and sound are both of very good quality indeed - blu-ray would of course have made the strong contrasts between light and dark clearer, but with such a compelling experience as this on offer, such niceties are really irrelevant. Don't hesitate!

I was really looking forward to watching this opera. I have never seen it but have listened to the original audio recording from the 1970s.
The singers on this DVD are superb on the whole and I enjoyed & was moved by the work bar some production details such as the over the top dramatics of the dancers which were un necessary & even annoying in my view.
The DVD suffers from very poor quality picture. I can not believe that such poor quality film gets released in this day and age. It looks like old video tape but even more grainy. As the recording is relatively recent one would have expected them to use better quality cameras etc.
It is such a shame and took away from enjoyment of this opera.
Now if only they released a DVD of the recording of Sallinen's Horseman opera! Preferably the version recorded for the Swedish tv in the 70s which was live from an opera festival in Finland...