The Composer
Armas Launis was mainly an opera composer. He wrote 10 operas (both libretto and music). Several were performed:
- In Finland: "The Seven Brothers" (1913), the first Finnish opera comique, and "Kullervo" (1917), both in full stage performance, and a concert performance of "Aslak Hetta" in 2004 at Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, directed by Sakari Oramo.
- In France: stage performance of Kullervo (1940, Nice, Palais de la Méditerranée) with radio broadcasts on Paris-Inter and Radio Monte-Carlo (1938–1940). A short version of "Jehudith" was also broadcast in 1954 (Paris-Inter)
Armas Launis also wrote chamber music pieces, cantatas, choruses, suites for orchestra and the music of the first Finnish ethnographic film "A wedding in Karelia, the land of poetry" (1921).
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Famous quotes containing the word composer:
“A nation creates music—the composer only arranges it.”
—Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857)
“A person taking stock in middle age is like an artist or composer looking at an unfinished work; but whereas the composer and the painter can erase some of their past efforts, we cannot. We are stuck with what we have lived through. The trick is to finish it with a sense of design and a flourish rather than to patch up the holes or merely to add new patches to it.”
—Harry S. Broudy (b. 1905)