Censored
Opera festival

9/2026 HELSINKI

The Censored opera festival is focused on a dialogue between early baroque and contemporary opera, and brings two world premieres to Helsinki in September 2026: La Doriclea: Inter-Acts and Orpheus in UNDERWORLD. The works explore themes of love, identity, and power in situations where our relationships with our identity and the surrounding society resists simple definitions. The heart of the festival lies in the re-imagining of history and myth, as well as the creation of new realities through artistic collaboration and technology.

La doriclea: inter-acts

FRiday 11.9. & saturday 12.9. KLO 19.00

BLACK BOX, MUSIc house

Mannerheimintie 13, Helsinki

Photography by Tuomas Tenkanen 2026, Graphic Design by Rebecca Smit.

La Doriclea: Inter-Acts, a new commission from Ensemble Nylandia, follows two colliding timelines: in a 17th-century opera, rival warriors fall in love with each other; in the current day, a group of artists survives in dystopian America; music and dance transcend time and weave these worlds closer together until the warrior Doriclea stands face to face with their 21st-century counterpart.

La Doriclea: Inter-Acts is a new production about finding solidarity and freedom in the connections made possible by art. The music features excerpts from La Doriclea (1645), the once-controversial and at the time partially censored opera by F. Cavalli, alongside other 17th century music by composers such as Byrd, Meder, and Marazzoli.

Duration ca. 2,5 hrs, with intermission

PERFORMERS

Isabella Shaw, Doriclea
Rachel Fenlon, Eurinda
Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野, Miko
Debi Wong, Dee
Antonia Atarah, Enn
Matias Häkkinen, conductor
Musicians by Ensemble Nylandia and Weimar Baroque
Olga Spyropoulou, director
Alexis Fletcher, choreographer

tickets 29,50 / 20 €

From Music House sales channels (ticket desk open Mon-Fri 13-18)

tickets 11.9.

tickets 12.9.

La Doriclea: Inter-Acts

co-creators

Isabella Shaw
Olga Spyropoulou
Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野
Debi Wong
Luke Hathaway
Vera Plosila
Matias Häkkinen
Leopold Nicolaus
Alexis Fletcher

La Doriclea: Inter-Acts

co-producers

Ensemble Nylandia (FIN)
re:Naissance Immersive (CAN)
Fractal Arts Collective (CAN)
Weimar Baroque (DE)
Belle Spirale (CAN)

La doriclea: inter-acts supporters

La Doriclea: Inter-Acts has been produced with the support of the International Coproduction Fund (Internationaler Koproduktionsfonds) of the Goethe-Institut (DE), the Kone foundation (FIN), and the Canada Council for the Arts (CAN).

Orpheus in UNDERWOLRD

AN IMMERSIVE ROCK OPERA

FRIDAY 18.9. & saturday 19.9. klo 19.00

Pannu hall - dance house, cable factory

Kaapelinaukio 3, Helsinki

Photography by Chelsey Stuyt, 2024. 3D background by Bob Kreut. Graphic Design by Rebecca Smit.

Orpheus in UNDERWORLD is a contemporary version of the Orphean myth that fuses opera, dance, extended reality, motion capture and interactive technologies. This world premiere is co-produced by two Canadian companies: re:Naissance Immersive and the contemporary dance company, Belle Spirale.

Through an immersive exploration of our digital and carbon existences, the performance dissolves the binaries we are bound to from birth until death, and strums the threads between heaven and hell, male and female, maker and muse, performer and audience.

The story follows O, a trans person whose sense of gender and identity is expansive — yet who has lived a fractured life. Haunted by past experiences and personhoods that have been suppressed, repressed, or condemned, Orpheus journeys to UNDERWORLD, an online virtual world, where they find the opportunity to express themself through avatars in extended reality. As O navigates the fluid landscapes of identity and technology, Orpheus in UNDERWORLD challenges us to question: how do we navigate the vastness of our identities in spaces that resist our multiplicity?

Audiences are encouraged to arrive to the performance early to experience UNDERWORLD in virtual reality before the story begins.