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Friday, October 30, 2009, 7:30 pm
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Saturday, October 31, 2009, 7:30 pm
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Sunday, November 1, 2009, 7:30 pm
McCullough Theatre
$20 for public, $17 for faculty/staff and seniors, $10 for students

The University of Texas at Austin Butler Opera Center opens it’s 2009-10 season with a performance of Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s House of the Sun. The production is in collaboration with the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki Finland, and will feature a joint cast from the academy and the Butler School of Music. Markus Lehtinen of the Helsinki Academy will conduct.

House of the Sun is based on a bizarre but true tragedy of two elderly sisters who were found frozen to death in their trash-filled home in Rautavaara’s native Finland. Daughters of a family that had fled the Russian revolution, the women were never able to integrate into Finnish society, and lived a life of relative seclusion. When their family’s wealth ran out and they could no longer afford servants, they shut themselves in their home until death claimed them.

The story is told in a series of flashbacks in which the audience sees the sisters in their old age first, and then learns their story through their hallucinations and reveries. Misbegotten romance, political disruption, and family tragedy all contribute to their increasing seclusion.

The Production opened in Helsinki on October 15 and will play several performances there. Students from the Butler Opera Center spent nearly a month in at the Sibelius Academy in preparation for the production. Upon closing in Helsinki the entire production moves to McCullough Theatre on the UT campus to play four performances.

More information about this and all School of Music events can be found on the calendar or by calling the School of Music events hotline at 512-471-5401.

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