The Mine

The Mine is the first opera written by Rautavaara, which was first introduced in 2010, despite originating around a half-century earlier. The delay is interesting, because this is one of the very finest works of Finnish opera, and one that also bears an important imprint of its era. The piece's history started in 1957, when Rautavaara was studying music composition in Switzerland, where he encountered Hungarian refugees who related to him the political events in their homeland the previous year. This is also when he heard the story of the miners left trapped deep underground as the result of a collapse. In the piece, the miners rise up against the dictatorship and hold a general strike. As a closed community functioning in a closed space, the mine becomes a powerful metaphor for life and existence.

Hungarian-language discussion programme