Finnish Opera Composer Sets His Story Straight : Music: Aulis Sallinen launches ‘Kullervo’ into the notoriously uncertain artistic world of new opera on Tuesday at Music Center.

Imagine this, if you can: A U.S. opera company commissions an American composer to write an opera on, say, the French and Indian War. Then, with heavy government support and fanfare, the company records the new piece before it has ever been heard publicly, packs up principals, chorus, sets and costumes and goes to Finland for the premiere, coinciding with the release of the recording.

Then consider the pressure on that composer, now not only launching the notoriously uncertain artistic undertaking of a new opera, but suddenly a national cultural representative.

That, roughly, is the position in which Aulis Sallinen finds himself.

The Finnish National Opera and Los Angeles Music Center Opera have combined for the world premiere of his “Kullervo,” Tuesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“I feel some pressure, not for my sake only, but for the whole company,” the 56-year-old composer says. “The success of the piece also has economic importance for everybody.

“Composing is a very private business. You sit two or three years with a score, and it’s your realm. Nobody knows what happens there. Suddenly it all becomes very public--it is like a private diary read out publicly, that is about the feeling I have.”

Affable and articulate in his downtown hotel room, Sallinen at least has no worries about the staging “Kullervo” will receive. “I’m not nervous at all, because I’ve seen the production,” he says after attending rehearsals, “and I must say it is very nice.”

The director of the production is Kalle Holmberg, a theater veteran who created the original stagings of Sallinen’s three other operas. He and the composer also worked together on a television series called “The Iron Age,” based on the Finnish legends collected in the “Kalevala,” which is the source of the “Kullervo” story.

It was, in fact, the theatrical vision of Holmberg and other young directors that first made opera a viable project for Sallinen.

“As late as the 1960s, I hated opera,” he says. “Not the scores--I loved the music. But I hated the way they were put on the stages--very artificial, costumed concerts, not real theater.

“When I wrote ‘The Horseman’ (Sallinen’s first opera, given its premiere in 1975), my first decision was that I wanted a person from the theater to stage my opera. Kalle Holmberg brought real, good theater thinking to it, and he has staged all the premieres of my operas.

“A director must be a very creative person, who is not just illustrating the score. A director must be able to put a very strong personal vision onto the score.

“Before,” he says with a laugh, “directors were mostly retired tenors, who just said: ‘Stand here and sing--and sing loud!’ ”

Sallinen’s concern with dramatic expression and theatrical truth is clearly reflected in his lyrical style. This is not a piece for song-bird fanciers, with nary a high C or bel canto roulade. He favors lower voices, and when he uses sopranos and tenors, it is more for texture than for tessitura.

“An opera composer is always a storyteller,” Sallinen says. “Writing for the human voice, it is solely expression that is important for me, not any play with technique. I consider the voices to be part of the orchestra, and I handle them like instruments.”

The tale Sallinen has set himself to tell here is a grim one. He considers its basic symbols to be fire and stone: Kullervo the character is born in the fiery destruction of his father’s household and dies in the flaming revenge he visits on his uncle, while he has a rock at the core of his being instead of a heart.

This extremely alienated and nihilistic figure is readily recognizable today, and the cover of the Ondine CD of the opera features Jorma Hynninen in the black leather garb he wears in the title role.

“ ‘Kullervo’ is a very contemporary story,” Sallinen says. “You can find these sort of fellows everywhere today.”

Living with such epic tragedy was not easy. “It’s very frustrating to look into a dark tunnel for three years and not see any light,” the composer says, “which is why I included three areas of warmth.”

These areas are the maternal love of Kullervo’s mother, his erotic relationship with the young wife of his master, the Smith, and his innocent, idealistic friend Kimmo. Kullervo murders the Smith’s wife, his mother dies of grief, and Kimmo is driven mad by the horrors.

Much of this is quite freely adapted from the “Kalevala” sources. Sallinen wrote the libretto himself, drawing on the “Kalevala” original language for the important choruses, and basing the structure on a 19th-Century play.

“Kullervo” is also set for the long-delayed new house in Helsinki, now scheduled to open next year. The opera would have had its premiere inaugurating the building, had the house been completed on time.

The $165-million structure, Finland’s first hall built specifically for opera, was bankrolled by the Finnish government, which takes an active, enabling interest in the arts.

“Since Finland is a small country without military or economic power, the creative sources are extremely important for the identity of the country,” Sallinen says. “The arts in Finland are very strongly supported by the state.”

The composer himself is a direct beneficiary of this enlightened attitude. The state awards many grants for various time periods, but Sallinen is one of only two contemporary artists given a lifetime position as professor of arts.

Currently, he is well along on his fifth opera, another reason why Finnish National Opera wanted no further delay with “Kullervo,” which was completed in 1988. “The Palace,” a satiric opera on an English libretto by expatriate New Yorker Irene Dische and a German poet, will be translated into Finnish for its premiere at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 1994.

The popularity of modern opera in Finland has been explained many ways, as Sallinen says it must. He is inclined to note, however, the shift away from traditional stagings, which was so important for his development as an opera composer.

“The Finnish people have always been crazy about theater. There is a little theater in every village. Opera is an extension of theater,” he says.

“So all the good experiences that people got from the theater, they now can get in opera.”