The Building of the Boat
Abandoned opera by Jean Sibelius / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Building of the Boat (in Finnish: Veneen luominen) was a projected Wagnerian opera for soloists, choir, and orchestra that occupied the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius from 8 July 1893 to late-August 1894, at which point he abandoned the project. The piece was to have been a collaboration with the Finnish author J. H. Erkko [fi], whose libretto (joint with Sibelius) adapted Runos VIII and XVI of the Kalevala, Finland's national epic. In the story, the wizard Väinämöinen tries to seduce the moon goddess Kuutar[lower-alpha 1] by building a boat with magic; his incantation is missing three words, and he journeys to the underworld of Tuonela to obtain them. In July 1894, Sibelius attended Wagner festivals in Bayreuth and Munich. His enthusiasm for his own opera project waned as his attitude towards the German master turned ambivalent and, then, decisively hostile. Instead, Sibelius began to identify as a "tone painter" in the Lisztian mold.
The Building of the Boat | |
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Abandoned opera by Jean Sibelius | |
Native name | Veneen luominen |
Catalogue | None |
Text | |
Language | Finnish |
Composed |
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As with other aborted projects—for example, the oratorio Marjatta (1905) and the orchestral song The Raven (Der Rabe, 1910)[lower-alpha 2]—Sibelius did not discard, but rather repurposed, the fruits of his labor. In this case, he incorporated material from The Building of the Boat into several subsequent compositions, most conclusively: The Wood Nymph (Op. 15, 1895) and The Swan of Tuonela (from the Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22). Sibelius never again attempted a large-scale opera, making it one of the few genres in which he did not produce a viable work.[lower-alpha 3]