Thornton Opera
Statements & Bios

Emilie Gardberg and Robert Cutietta Deans of the Sibelius Academy of Uniarts Helsinki and the USC Thornton School of Music

On 26 April 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant released alarming levels of radiation far beyond Ukraine, causing the worst global environmental disaster ever seen.
 
All the Truths We Cannot See, A Chernobyl Story is, in the words of the opera’s librettist Glenda Dawn Goss, a story about the fundamental conflicts of human existence: courage and cowardice, love and hate, past and future, life and death. 
 
When composer Uljas Pulkkis presented the idea of a new opera to Markus Lehtinen, Professor of Opera at the Sibelius Academy of Uniarts Helsinki, in December 2017, neither of them could imagine the global political crisis the opera’s world premiere would face.
 
When Sibelius Academy and USC Thornton School of Music shook hands to create a joint opera production in the fall of 2018, no one could predict that a world-wide COVID-19 crisis would emerge and separate the partners for a long time.
 
When a group of USC Thornton students arrived in Helsinki for rehearsals in January 2022, none of them could guess how painfully timely their work would be, how close their words would come:
 
O sons and daughters of Ukraine
Hold fast this your ancient land.
”Babusya’s Ballad of Ukraine” from the opera’s first act
 
The completion of this work is a survival story.
 
We embarked on this journey together because we believe in the power of opera to make a life-changing impact on both our students and audiences. We kept going, even though the pandemic separated us. And we are moving forward together to Los Angeles – as we continue to use our voice for truth and peace.