Into the Fire (Tulleminek)

Opera

At the Estonian Theatre Union’s annual award ceremony, the Musical Production Award is given to recognise a high calibre of musical production. The award recipients in 2018 are Märt-Matis Lill, Jan Kaus, Taago Tubin and Taavi Kull for the opera “Into the Fire”

War tests the fabric of humanity and forces us to admit that the only thing people learn from history is that they don’t learn anything from history. As such, our production deals with timeless universal principles and archetypes.

The principal source of inspiration for the opera, World War I, was revolutionary and with the advent of weapons of mass destruction, flouted all of the rules of “civilised” warfare. Historian Christopher Clark wrote: “The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world.” This metaphor aptly captures the nature of developments in our current world as well.

War can be poignant, giving us acts of heroism and noble hopes, but sooner or later it becomes subsumed in blood and mud, heroism turns to brutality or painful loss, and the great promises of collective happiness turn to personal tragedy for every individual. The maps of territories waiting to be conquered do not show the devastated landscapes.
Into the Fire relies on accounts of the Trojan War and recollections of those who fought in World War I.

Märt-Matis Lill, Jan Kaus, Taago Tubin

Premiere 22.04.2017, Harbour Theatre

In Estonian with English surtitles

LIBRETTO (in English)