The King Goes Forth to France ('Kuningas lähtee Ranskaan') (1983)
(The King Goes Forth to France (Kuningas lahtee Ran)

... conductor Clive Timms produces a powerful account of Sallinen's sometimes arch, sometimes brutal, but never boring score.

Sallinen posssesses a full armoury of operatic skills, which he deploys in a conservative manner that recalls Prokofiev or Shostakovich, and makes regular use of parady.

All of which is conveyed in a score of eclectic brilliance. Sallinen can do sardonic Shostakovich, brooding Sibelius, lyrical Rachmaninov, playful Prokofiev and astringent Britten. but he welds all these discernible influences (plus some eerie orchestral effects all his own) into a coherent and colourful language that is an ideal vehicle for drama. Now, please, for new British productions of his even more powerful Kullervo and The Red Line.

[the] production is as brilliant as one could wish. The Guildhall School's orchestra, conducted by Clive Timms, projects the music with subtlety and panache.

Aulis Sallinen’s opera, “The King Goes Forth to France”, with its curious mix of operatic convention coupled with almost Monty Python-esque satire, and set to an engagingly lyrical and generous score, gives young singers opportunities to shine, and an orchestra something to really get its teeth into.

The work’s fantasy also provides fodder for an inventive production team. This staging is clever and varied and flows seamlessly,...Sallinen’s music is both tuneful and has moments of great sonic beauty; there are many extremely moving passages of string-writing, and some entertaining moments of dance pastiche. The passage with the Burghers of Calais is one such example and here was matched by some witty choreography delivered with some panache by the six singers.

He uses apparently common-place tonal materials as the basis for a highly plastic and original orchestral counterpoint…never overburdened and nearly always apt and strongly profiled. Ostinato pedals help precision and tonal clarity…the vocal writing has a quality of its own. Sallinen is intoxicated by the sheer sound of his language: its bouncing tonic accents provoke wonderfully energetic rhythmic patter [and] a genuinely lyrical phraseology which never feels in the least bland or facile.

'The King' is not merely a piece of ephemeral excitement but a work of enduring substance: the richest bloom so far on the sudden, late-flowering phenomenon of Finnish opera.

His idiom is basically tonal, darkly sardonic in a Shostakovich sort of way, and sparely lyrical after the manner of Britten or (every now and then) Puccini. His orchestration glitters in its pungent clarity, he writes gratefully for the voice, and powerfully for the chorus. His music is enormously approachable…strangely haunting [and] unique.

It is one of the liveliest new works I have come across for some while. Sallinen combines a lucid, economical style of impeccable Finnish pedigree…with an instinctive feel for theatrical pacing and a warm response to what sociologists would call the human dimension - the real feeling at the heart of the theatrical artifice. A well-made but self-consciously elaborate text is transformed, under this composer's hands, into a moving story about living individuals.

I find in the music of 'The King' not just the rarest of gifts, the knack of theatre, but something more curious - that ability…to combine the surreal and the popular so that one disconcertingly takes over the other. For such an approachable work, 'The King' has the oddest habit of not being what you thought or expected.

In Sallinen Finland possesses one of the world's few natively gifted opera creators alive today; the very nature and impact of his third opera bore that out…the unveiling of the new opera…was an event of major importance on the international operatic scene. [It is], in the best way, exciting, disturbing, and continuously surprising…it is music of tremendous sweep, confidence and theatrical vitality…appreciation of the influences in Sallinen's background - Sibelius, Prokofiev, Britten, Shostakovich… - only underlines the distinctness of his own voice…[his] gift for lining the right vocal gesture, for varying texture…, for modulating from speech…into song and pathos into raucous parody, is all his own..[a] significant, surprising, and exhilarating piece."

It is hard to describe 'The King' - a 'schwarz-Zauberflote' is the best I can do…hard to describe but continuously engaging, at times oddly moving, and often darkly funny…more than ever his voice is utterly individual in its corruscating instrumentation (swirling percussion arabesques), its spareness of texture, its tight counterpoint.

[His] most visionary, subtle and dramatically complex undertaking to date.