summer of 1897. This too was cancelled, as Sibelius had not yet finished his revisions—indeed, there is no evidence he ever began reworking the piece. Additionally, Hertzberg was unavailable to overhaul his libretto, having died on 5 December 1896. In a sketchbook, Sibelius jotted a sad waltz in F minor below the inscription: "Now Rafael is dead". Sibelius's thoughts returned to The Maiden in the Tower on several occasions. In 1900, he arranged a 12-minute concert overture that incorporated material from five of the opera's nine numbers and conducted it twice in Turku (Åbo) in early April. A few years later, in June 1905 and October 1906, the Finnish writer —who was then director of the Viipuri (Vyborg) rural theatre—wrote to Sibelius with a two-part plan to program The Maiden in the Tower: first for 1907, Scene 3 as a stand-alone piece at the Viipuri Song Festival; and second for February 1908, the entire opera. Finne would translate the libretto into Finnish. Sibelius agreed to the proposal, but for unknown reasons Finne's efforts never came to fruition. Sibelius had not given up on The Maiden in the Tower, however. First, his diary from the beginning of 1910, lists the opera—and parenthetically singles out the chorus's spring music from Scene 3—under the title "Old Pieces to be Revised". Second, Sibelius's opus list from August 1911 places the overture to The Maiden in the Tower next to Kullervo (Op. 7, 1892) and connects the two with the inscription "reworkable". Sibelius may have considered uniting them into one piece, with the opera's concert overture from 1900 joining 's . Yet, Sibelius never overhauled any part of the opera—as he put it later in life, "The maiden may remain in her tower". When Emmy's daughter, the soprano Aino Ackté, wrote to him in November 1913 requesting to program The Maiden in the Tower in Finnish for the 1914 Mikkeli Song Festival, Sibelius refused to budge: "With all my soul, I would like to be at your service ... But—it is absolutely impossible! ...The text!! As for the music, it should be reworked. But, I'm sorry, there is no time for that". Posthumous revival Twenty-three years after Sibelius's death, The Maiden in the Tower received its twentieth-century premiere on 28 January 1981, when the composer's son-in-law Jussi Jalas conducted the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra at Finlandia Hall; the four soloists were: as the Maiden, Jorma