December 1917, took Madetoja much longer than expected; letters to his mother indicate that he had entertained hopes of completing the opera by the end of 1920 and, when this deadline passed, 1921 and, eventually, 1922. In the end, the opera was not completed until September 1923, although it would be another full year until the opera premiered. Nevertheless, some of the music (from Acts I and II) did see the light of day sooner, as Madetoja had pieced together a five-number orchestral suite at the behest of Kajanus, who premiered the suite on 8 March 1923 in Bergen, Norway during his orchestra tour; the reviews were positive, describing the music as "interesting and strange". The first performance of the complete opera on 25 October 1924 at the Finnish National Opera (which, incidentally, was also the one-thousandth performance in the history of the Opera House) was, perhaps, the greatest triumph of Madetoja's entire career. Indeed, with The Ostrobothnians, Madetoja succeeded where his teacher, Jean Sibelius, famously had failed: in the creation of a Finnish national opera, a watershed moment for a country lacking an operatic tradition of its own.{{#tag:ref|The first notable Finnish opera was Fredrik Pacius's Kung Karls jakt (King Carl's Hunt) in 1852, after which followed a "long hiatus" until the rise of the national Romantic movement and "the desire to find an opera to reflect the burgeoning national values". Certainly, the country did not lack for attempts at forging a "national opera": for example, Oskar Merikanto in 1898 with Pohjan neiti (Maiden of the North); Erkki Melartin in 1909 with the Wagnerian Aino; Selim Palmgren in 1910 with Daniel Hjort; Armas Launis in 1913 and 1917, respectively, with [[Seven Brothers (Launis)|Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers)]] and Kullervo; and, Aarre Merikanto in 1922 with Juha. Nevertheless, each failed to capture the public's (lasting) attention.|group= n}} In Helsingin sanomat, Katila wrote on behalf of many Finns, calling The Ostrobothnians "the most substantial work in the whole of Finnish opera". The Ostrobothnians immediately became a fixture of the Finnish operatic repertoire (where it remains today), and was even produced abroad during Madetoja's lifetime, in Kiel, Germany in 1926; Stockholm in 1927; Gothenburg in 1930; and, Copenhagen in 1938. Two final masterworks After the success of The Ostrobothnians, Madetoja departed for France, staying for six months in Houilles, a small town just outside of Paris. Here, in the quiet of the Parisian suburbs,