First full-length opera in Sámi
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Rachel Einarsson3 min read|15. January 2026
It has never been seen before. And the premiere has long been sold out.
The world’s first full-length opera in Sámi, “Ovllá”, receives its world premiere on 16 January in Finland, taking place in Oulu on the occasion of the city being European Capital of Culture 2026.
“Ovllá” uses the Sámi joik as a recurring means of expression, and the production and staging are a cross-aesthetic collaboration between Finnish and Sámi artists.
Klassisk bureau has corresponded with the opera’s composer, Cecilia Damström, about what is going on.
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She lets a hard-pressed language and a vulnerable culture be heard. She composes music for a little boy’s story about how it feels and what it is like to be forced into another culture, while she herself – entirely voluntarily – as an artist moves into a new area with “Ovllá”.
The Finnish composer Cecilia Damström, 37, otherwise has rich and broad experience in musical constellations. Her repertoire includes music for symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles, vocal music and children’s opera. She is known for bringing political subjects into her music, and in this context the climate has often been her focal point. In 2024 she was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize for her orchestral work “Extinctions”, which deals with the origin of life, evolution and the mass extinction of species.
Now it is her first actual opera composition, which makes room for nine soloists, a mixed choir and symphony orchestra. Cecilia Damström has written the work in close collaboration with Sámi musicians, who have, among other things, contributed by composing all of the joiks in the opera. These special Sámi songs will have a central place as an original form of expression particular to Sámi culture, which for the first time in music history now gets its first opera in its own language. The Sámi composer Ánndaris/Anders Rimpi has been a consultant on the musical design, while Oulu Teatteri’s director, Heta Haanperä, is in charge of the production. The orchestra of the opera is Oulu Sinfonia, led by Oulu Sinfonia’s chief conductor, Rumon Gamba.
The libretto was created by the Norwegian-Sámi author Juho Sire/Siri Broch Johansen. The language is both North Sámi and Finnish, while there are North Sámi, Finnish and English surtitles at the performances.
The Sámi national theatre Beaivváši, located in northern Norway, takes part in the production.
The opera is about the Sámi people as the only indigenous people in the Nordic region, and as an example we see the main character Ovllá, who is pressured into assimilation as a little boy. Forced to take on another identity, pressed into a culture other than his own. This role is played by the Norwegian-Sámi singer-songwriter, joiker and actor Emil Kárlsen, who has also supplied all of the joiks for the opera. The story of Ovllá is fiction, but everything that happens in the opera is authentic experiences from the Norwegian, Russian, Finnish and Swedish Sámi populations. The opera will no doubt be a portrayal of Finland as a ruthless colonial power.
“The opera “Ovllá” is a commissioned work by the city theatre of Oulu (Uleåborg in Danish) together with the Sámi national theatre Beaivváši and with the city orchestra of Oulu, on the occasion of Oulu being European Capital of Culture 2026. The opera is part of Finland’s public apology for how it has oppressed Sámi culture and the Sámi language. The opera is about what it is like to grow up with a “hidden” and suppressed cultural identity and what consequences this trauma has for the rest of one’s life,” Cecilia Damström writes to Klassisk bureau.
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Photo: Jouni Porsanger