The Savonlinna Opera Festival for iPad
 
The greatest opera festival of all times is to be held in Savonlinna between July 5th and August 4th this year. For 100 years will have passed since opera was first heard in Olavinlinna Castle. In honour of the occasion, the Savonlinna Opera Festival is releasing an iPad app delving beneath the surface and telling about the seasons seven operas, its numerous concerts and events, and some of the people involved.
 
This journalistic publication differs from the usual flyers and programme notes, featuring interviews with soloists, composers, directors and conductors, and glimpses of life behind the scenes: production planning, the wardrobe, and the sets workshop. It also describes some of the challenges of staging a full-scale opera in a medieval castle.
 
The programme for the jubilee 2012 season is an interesting mixture of new and traditional. Representing tradition are three of the most legendary and most popular productions in the Savonlinna Festival’s history: August Everding’s direction of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Ilkka Bäckman’s version of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, and András Mikó’s vision of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. These three classics will be matched with two world premieres: Kimmo Hakola’s La Fenice and the first ever opera born on the Internet and created by an online community: Free Will. 
 
The guest opera house – the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet – is one of the most interesting opera companies in all Europe at the moment. They bring to Olavinlinna Britten’s Peter Grimes and Kverndokk’s The Fourth Watch of the Night (Den fjerde nattevakt).