Savonlinna: Opera in a Castle!

So, I’m not the world’s biggest opera fan, but when I found out that Finland has a world-class opera festival where all the performances take place in a CASTLE, I was so down. The Savonlinna Opera Festival only started on July 6, so I was lucky to be able to catch a performance. Because I’m an opera n00b, I arranged it so I could see Puccini’s Madama Butterfly since I already knew I liked Puccini as a composer (I’ll get to the opera itself in a bit). It was actually the premiere of that opera, so that was cool to see.

My accommodations were pretty expensive – everywhere in town raises their prices a lot during the festival, which lasts for the month of July. The place I stayed is actually not normally a hotel, but they do room rentals just during the opera festival. I was going to take the bus into town to cut down on walking because I was wearing flats and a nicer dress for the performance, but I waiting in the wrong spot and missed the bus so I ended up walking anyway! I walked and read at the same time, which kind of reminded me of my elementary school days. My teacher would take us down to the library and on the way back to class I’d start my book right away while I was walking, and get so distracted that I’d walk all the way to the end of the school by accident and then notice that the rest of my class had already gone back into the classroom… To my teachers’ credit, they MUST have noticed that I was always a couple minutes after everyone else, but never said a word, hahah.

I haven’t been eating out much on this trip, but I decided to treat myself and be all luxurious since I was already going to the opera. I went to a restaurant near-ish to the castle, which I didn’t take note of the name, but the food was good. I had ravioli (which seemed to be fried, strangely), a Finnish cider, and when they brought me bread before my dinner, they also brought a little cup of mango yogurt! I’m not sure if this is just something this restaurant does, but I really liked that little element. After dinner, I walked to the castle. You could tell all the people who were heading to the opera, they all looked pretty classy. I saw one group of girls in full-on prom dress level outfits, and was like, oh shit, am I SUPER UNDERDRESSED? But luckily I wasn’t. Which works out, because I literally only brought one nicer dress on this trip, and it was specifically for this performance.

The opera festival is held in a 15th century castle called Olavinlinna. And it’s in the middle of the lake. They don’t have a full-year performance space, and instead they transform the main interior into a huge auditorium with a tent roof and tiered seating, and a stage. You obviously weren’t allowed to take photos during the performance, but I got one before the show started. I have to say that this is probably the only opera I will ever see that had intermittent background seagull sounds. And a bird that got inside the tent and flew around a bit before flying out again!

About the opera. I had a lot of reservations about Madama Butterfly, and I would have been happy with Otello or Turandot (which are also part of this year’s festival), but it was this one or Faust that lined up with my schedule, so I picked this one. I have major problems with the Orientalism of the whole show, and the language used to describe Cio-Cio-san. Plus, the character is FIFTEEN, and she’s getting married to a US naval officer who intends to just ditch her as soon as he can find an American wife. He leaves shortly after their marriage, doesn’t return for 3 years (meanwhile she stares out to sea every day waiting for him to return), returns (with his American wife) only when he finds out she had a baby, gets her to agree to give them the boy to raise in the US “for the greater good”, and then she dies. I’m by no means saying I didn’t enjoy the performance, because it was amazing, and I’m glad I went – I cried at the end, Sae-Kyung Rim as Butterfly was SO GOOD, and the music is beautiful. But I guess I’m just wondering whether this characterization of Japan and a Japanese woman is something we still want to keep celebrating. (Ok, I’m done.)

There was a 30 minute intermission, and I’m not even a big wine person but I just got so taken in by the cuteness of the small wine bottles that I got a white. The woman at the bar was like, one glass or two? And I was like, ONE (I sensed judgement). The portion was really more suited for two people, but I drank the whole thing out of stubbornness and a sense of having paid for the whole thing.

On the way out of the castle at 10pm the light was AMAZING, and myself and another lady going solo swapped photos for each other with the castle. I snapped a couple photos of the sunset back at my hotel as well – yup, the sun was setting at 10:45pm(ish).

The next morning, I don’t remember writing it down, but past-me had told present-me that I should go to this place for brunch called Kalliolinna. So I obeyed. I couldn’t even look it up to see what it was because the place I was staying didn’t have wifi (grumble grumble). You can only get there by walking/biking (or boat!), because it’s on an island accessibly by footbridge. The first one starts just across from the kauppatori (market square) and ends at a Casino Hotel (which IS accessible by car as well), and then across the parking lot at the hotel is another path that leads to the island. The second pathway was so beautiful, I did a little gasp when I turned the corner. The café itself is pretty much the only thing on the island; the rest is just an established trail that runs around the perimeter of the island.

The café was so sweet and lovely! (Thank you, past-Megan.) They only do crepes, and then coffee/tea and a type of cake. You order at the counter, and once you pay the tea is self-serve – with delightfully non-matching mugs. There were tables out in a clearing nearby, as well as on the porch and inside. I got an Earl Grey tea and a crepe with bananas, peanut butter, and marshmallows on it. The marshmallows turned out to be the rainbow variety, which made my inner child very happy. I don’t know why I’ve never put marshmallows on crepes/pancakes/waffles before, because they got delightfully melty and with the peanut butter was like a Fluffer Nutter sandwich.

After eating, I walked around the island a bit and sat and read on a rock. There were multiple people sun-bathing alone who seemed to have biked there for that specific purpose. I finished the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy the other night (and it was great, highly recommend!) and decided I wanted to read something that was already on my Kindle that I hadn’t yet gotten around to. I remembered that I had never fully read the Series of Unfortunate Events, so I restarted it from the beginning and am now into book four – I totally didn’t realize as a kid that they’re this short and quick! On the way back to the footbridge, I snapped a picture of the exterior of the café to demonstrate to you its pastel pink woodsy cuteness.

Back in the kauppatori, I got two mini turnover-ish things (“örtsy”, apparently). One was blueberry and the other was cloudberry. Cloudberries are an uncommon berry which are only found in certain areas of the world. Fanni was telling me a couple days ago about how her family picks them all the time, and as a child she’d go in search of a swamp (where they grow). She let me try some of hers that she’d frozen, and something about the taste and the swamp description rang a bell. I was telling her that they kind of reminded me of these berries from Newfoundland called bakeapples, and when I looked it up to show her a picture, Google informed me that cloudberries and bakeapples are different names for the same thing! So I’d actually had them before. We were very entertained by this, because each of us thought they were specific to the area we knew them from.

I walked up to see the Savonlinna church, but honestly it was not that exciting inside or out (I might be churched-out) so I didn’t take any photos. I was getting hungry again and knew I had to eat before I got on my 4pm bus (because it takes 4.5 hours to get to Savonlinna from Helsinki) so I hit up the grocery store again. So classy. I noticed on Google Maps that there was a big green blob close to the bus terminal labeled “cemetery” and thought it might be a good place to sit and eat. It was very peaceful and wooded and there was a bench, but I only lasted for five minutes because the bugs were SO BAD. And I was the only tasty snack person around so I had lots of buggy company.

Tomorrow is my last full day in Finland, and in the morning I might explore shops a bit depending when I wake up, and I’m headed to Ainola (Sibelius’ house!) to see the museum there. And on Thursday, off to Iceland!