Heinz-Juhani Hofmann: Myself/Myself/Myself

multi-genre musical theatre performance for a singer, actress and electronics, duration 60 min
premiere in August 2024, Aleksanterin teatteri, Helsinki

The powerful contemporary opera deals with a young woman’s struggle with mental health, accelerated by social media. The story follows the inner struggles of a young woman called Afrodite AKA Didi in her obsessive pursuits. Didi pushes herself against the world, mirroring herself against her mother and the beggar woman sitting on the street. This world is not clear-cut: beauty and ugliness slip under one another. From Didi’s unstoppable stream-of-consciousness stems a dialogue where self-discipline, ideals of beauty, the quest for perfection and cross-generational questions which suck her into their increasingly swirling abyss. The public eye becomes an altar, to where the person’s core is brought.

Myself/Myself/Myself is an independent work, and at the same time the first part of a series titled The Public Life and Death of Aphrodite “Didi” Hakkarainen.

Heinz-Juhani Hofmann, libretto & music
Johanna Freundlich, direction
Tuisku Hillilä, sound design
Ninja Pasanen, visual design
Kalle Paasonen, light design
Leila Mäkynen, makeup consultation
Katariina Nyberg, marketing assistence
Eetu Lipponen, video design

On stage:
Annika Fuhrmann, sopraano
Pauliina Palo, actress

© Mikael Ahlfors

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“Rarely has opera aligned so well with the day’s news headlines as in Heinz-Juhani Hofmann’s new work Minä/minä/minä. […] The main character of Hofmann’s opera, a young woman named Didi, or Aphrodite, charges at the world with such fury that it terrifies the audience. […] Didi is so full of herself that there is no room for anything else in the world. Reality takes shape through selfies, and her self-esteem is crushed by society’s beauty and other standards. Hofmann has written a virtuosic vocal texture for the character, constantly shifting between a hysterical flood of speech and coloratura shrieks that mirror its rhythms and phonetics. It treads the line between comedy and tragedy, psychorealism and absurdity, with electronics amplifying the dizzying effect.

Soprano Annika Fuhrmann handles it all phenomenally. She is already known as a vocal artist who expands the boundaries of singing, and with this interpretation, she leaps to the forefront of contemporary opera performers. The audience is both horrified and secretly amused by the poor girl’s desperate struggles. Inside Didi seems to be such a knot of problems that not even the best psychiatrist could untangle it.“

Harri Kuusisaari, Rondo (26.8.2024)

“The overwhelming anxiety is conveyed through the soloist’s resonant recitatives, the minimalist electronic backdrop, and the singing voice rising above the human clamor, and especially through the physical expression that anchors a strong presence.

The expressive text of the compact, roughly hour-long performance is full of sharp psychological and societal insights that reach in many directions. Despite the heavy content, it is also a surprisingly beautiful whole.“

Tuomas Rantanen, Voima (5.9.2024)

“Composer and librettist Heinz-Juhani Hofmann once again explores family hell in the opera Myself/Myself/Myself. […] This time, it centers on a duel between mother (actress Pauliina Palo) and daughter (soprano Annika Fuhrmann). In this clash, both Palo and Fuhrmann perform admirably under the precise direction of Johanna Freundlich, the next artistic director of the Helsinki Festival.

Musically, Hofmann again skillfully relies on rhythmically precise spoken singing, which occasionally blossoms into defined pitches and even includes a melody by Hassler, which J.S. Bach used in his St. Matthew Passion and Paul Simon in American Tune. […] In his usual style, Hofmann instills tremendous tension and covers substantial content in this approximately hour-long work. […]

This summer, discussions have again emerged about the masculinity and conservatism of the opera world. To this dialogue, Myself/Myself/Myself and the entire Helsinki Contemporary Opera Festival program at the Alexander Theater make an excellent contribution.”

Vesa Sirén, Helsingin Sanomat (24.8.2024)

“A really intense performance, I barely remembered to breathe.“

Audience comment

“It was painfully intense content, and I had to cheer and shout during the applause just to let off some steam.“

Audience comment