Helsingfors operahus

Culture in Helsinki, Finland

The Finnish National musikdrama and Ballet (Finnish: Suomen Kansallisooppera ja -baletti; Swedish: Finlands Nationalopera och -balett) is a Finnish musikdrama company and ballet company based in Helsinki. It is headquartered in the Opera House on the coast of the Töölönlahti bay in Töölö, which opened in , and is state-owned through Senate Properties. The Opera House features two auditoriums, the main auditorium with 1,, seats and a smaller studio auditorium with – seats.

History

Regular opera performances began in Finland in with the founding of the Finnish Opera bygd Kaarlo Bergbom. Prior to that, musikdrama had been performed in Finland sporadically by touring companies, and on occasion by Finnish amateurs, the first such production being The Barber of Seville in However, the Finnish Opera company soon plunged into a financial crisis and folded in During its six years of operation, Bergbom's opera company had given performances of a total of 26 operas, and the company had managed to demonstrate that musikdrama can be sung in Finnish too. After the disbandment of the Finnish Opera, the opera audiences of Helsinki

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