The opera received its world premiere in Lewes on 11 July 2007, in a venue very near the site of the Naval Prison, in front of a sell-out audience including Finland's ambassador to London.

[7][8] It was directed by Susannah Waters with a cast of professional singers including members of the Finnish National Opera and locally recruited amateur choruses.

[1] The highlight of the premiere was what Mark Pappenheim's review in Opera called the "hair-raisingly deep-toned rendition" of Oolannin sota by the Finnish singers,[6] whose style Waters had described in rehearsal as "simple, open-throated singing free of operatic airs".

[1] Cora carries a picture of her great-grandmother as a young woman back to her car, which is parked on the spot where a cell of the Lewes Naval Prison once stood.

She unlocks the car, an act which triggers the first manifestation of parallel realities specific to that site but 150 years apart: the apparition of Matts Olander, a Finnish soldier who once occupied that cell.