Olavinlinna Castle (Savonlinna Opera Festival)

Olavinlinna is a real castle, three granite towers rising straight out of the Saimaa lake waters since 1475. Every July its courtyard becomes an opera house: the soprano Aino Ackté sang the first festival here in 1912, and since 1967 the Savonlinna Opera Festival has grown into one of the great summer pilgrimages of the opera world, a stones throw from the Russian border and a world away from everything else.

Die Zauberflöte has a special claim on this courtyard. August Everding staged his Taikahuilu here in 1973 and it became the festival's signature production, played for decades under the covered arena sky. In July 2027 it returns once more, sung in Finnish, with the castle walls doing the set design for free.

On stage here

Performance dates

Video

Taikahuilu trailer – Savonlinna Opera Festival (earlier revival of the same Everding staging)

Data: open sources (opera houses, ticketing platforms, Wikidata). Part of the worldwide Die Zauberflöte map.