Stella Tähtinen: Nature’s resilience and connecting generations

After my first reading of the libretto, the most prominent themes seemed to be the power play at the cost of human lives and the environmental catastrophe. The animals and a variety of pivotal inanimate objects become anthropomorphic in the opera, i.e., they behave and feel similarly to humans. This anthropomorphistic approach  provides the animals with a voice that highlights the imbalance and inequality between humans and the nature.

The animals observe the human world and its events from the perspective of an outsider who has been pushed to the side, and yet is the only one who is able to see the bigger picture. Thus, in a way, nature becomes the philosopher and provider of objective wisdom in the opera. There is a strong feeling of broken mutual trust between the animals and the humans in the village, yet they all live side-by-side. However, nature endures even after the disaster, although damaged and traumatized. The animals get their peaceful land back, but at a dreadful cost. The surviving humans, on the other hand, are forced to leave the area, while the humans responsible for the severity of the disaster carry on polishing their own reputations and saving their own backsides.

I knew about the concealed information and slowness of communication about the Chernobyl disaster before getting involved with this opera. I also remember once reading an article about the nature reserve that now exists on the Belarusian side of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. My first reading of the libretto has already made me more interested in finding out more in detail about the events that lead to the disaster, and how nature can resume its life after something so catastrophic. I think therefore an opera is a powerful and thought-provoking way to shed light on a topic that most people have probably heard about but which, especially for the generation who were not yet born at the time, can be difficult to relate to on an emotional level. For the generation that lived through the Chernobyl disaster and the storm after it, it can be a way to process memories, and even trauma, through music.

It is such a privilege to be a part of such a meaningful production, that deals with a truly relevant and thought-provoking topic for today’s world and the handling of the current environmental crisis.

Stella Tähtinen 4.5.2020
The author plays the parts of Berehynia, Yulia, Dosimeter, robot and firefighter in the opera All the Truths We Cannot See – A Chernobyl Story.