South wind instead of northern lights: Lilli Paasikivi will be director of the Bregenz Festival in 2025

Created: 12/14/2022 5:03 p.m

By: Markus Thiel

Lilli Paasikivi is a mezzo-soprano and has been artistic director of the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki since 2013 © Anja Köhler

That with the white smoke went faster than expected: Lilli Paasikivi is drawn from the Finnish National Opera to Bregenz.

She is the second woman to lead the festival.

Maybe she thought at some point: I'll never get away from here.

Member of the Opera Studio of the Finnish National Opera, then promoted to the ensemble.

And when the directorship became vacant in 2013, mezzo-soprano Lilli Paasikivi applied for the position – with success.

28 years in Helsinki came together.

"I love the Finnish National Opera, but that's enough." Words, spoken at the place of her future work: The 57-year-old will be Artistic Director of the Bregenz Festival in 2025 and thus succeed Elisabeth Sobotka.

Actually, the people from Bregenz only wanted to let white smoke rise in the first quarter of 2023.

The fact that things went so quickly with Lilli Paasikivi (emphasis on the first syllable of her last name, by the way) shows how much she must have convinced those responsible at Lake Constance.

There were 26 applicants, including “very well-known personalities”, as Festival President Hans-Peter Metzler puts it.

Trust must also be established quickly, you are already on first name terms in the management team.

From the mezzo career to the top of the opera house

Lilli Paasikivi was born in Imatra, Finland, right on the Russian border.

In her time as a singer, she sang the great mezzo repertoire, whether Octavian in "Rosenkavalier", Kundry in "Parsifal" or Fricka in "Ring".

Mariss Jansons brought her to the BR Symphony Orchestra in 2004 for Mahler's Third Symphony.

And when asked about her favourites, also as artistic director, she names “great German works of the 20th century”, for example by Strauss or Korngold.

"But maybe I shouldn't say something like that at all," she added at the press conference.

Time is now pressing for the designated artistic director.

Ideally, yesterday should be the title of the new Seebühne production in 2026, including the production team - the preliminary planning there is long and complex.

As is well known, Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" will be shown a second and last time next summer.

In 2024 and 2025, Weber's "Freischütz" in the production by Philipp Stölzl should attract the masses to Vorarlberg.

Lilli Paasikivi announced that she will reveal more about 2026 in Spring 2023.

A revolution is not to be expected in Bregenz

The second woman on the Bregenz throne is also only the fifth person to fill this position.

For 30 years, from 1952 to 1982, Ernst Bär was director.

Between 1983 and 2003, under Alfred Wopmann, the festival developed the "Bregenz Dramaturgy" - with intelligent, clever spectacles on the floating stage.

David Pountney continued this from 2004 to 2014, who at the same time opened the Festspielhaus to lesser-known plays.

Elisabeth Sobotka, who took office in 2015, is returning to her artistic home after ten years: she was opera director at the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, and now she will be artistic director there in 2024.

It goes without saying that her successor, Lilli Paasikivi, will not turn everything upside down on Lake Constance. The operas on the lake stage must be popular so that they can finance the rest of the program with hundreds of thousands of visitors.

The festival suffered a trauma here when it staged Giordano's André Chenier in 2011 and 2012.

An outstanding production, which, however, met with much less interest and promptly brought Bregenz into financial difficulties.

"We don't need any revolutions," said Festival President Hans-Peter Metzler yesterday.

Nevertheless, Lilli Paasikivi has tried a few things at the helm of the Finnish National Opera.

In 2019, for example, she started "Opera beyond" - a project that tried out new technological possibilities in music theater and ballet.

But one of her next projects will be a personal one: this was her first press conference in German (with “relapses” into English).

"But I want to be able to speak the language fluently by 2025."