Innocence @Royal Opera House 2023
The career of the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho continues an upward trajectory since her first major operatic work L’Amour de loin. Her work and music have tended to be on the abstract level. The same cannot be said of her latest opera Innocence, first staged at Aix-en-Provence in 2021.
The subject matter for her latest work is the wedding of Tuomas and Stela which is being celebrated in Helsinki in the 2000’s. A Czech waitress Tereza recognises the groom’s family as being responsible for the destruction of her life ten years ago, when the family’s eldest son shot and killed his teacher and ten other classmates including Tereza’s daughter, Markéta. Thus, this psychological story unfolds dealing with the ten year after-effect of those involved at the time and still alive today. Could we be looking at any of the multiple USA shootings, or Dunblane in 1996, or Utøya in Norway in 2011? Each one has its own peculiarities but a similar story of massacres which are always roundly condemned by the politicians but leave people and communities shattered and unable to recover.
Innocence reveals thirteen principles with seven traumatic aftershock stories that stay with the individuals or their community. The opera does not preach like the politicians, but it delves into the depth of human emotion that otherwise would be frozen in time after ten years.
The Director, Simon Stone and the Set Designer, Chloe Lamford produce a two-tier cubed set, constantly turning and revealing architectural space that moves seamlessly between the restaurant and memory space of the school such as the kitchen, storeroom, toilet, and the closet. When you take away the aesthetic clean restaurant there are filthy stains of dirt and blood adorning the walls and floors in more than just a typical grubby school usage.
In one way or another the thirteen principles display their long-lost emotions; be it guilt or other impairments which turn out to be so relevant to the cause of the massacre. It turns out that the bridegroom, Tuomas and his sister, were co-conspirators in the massacre plan with their murdering brother. The father of the murderer blames himself for teaching him to shoot. A woman guiltily hides in a cupboard not allowing others to participate in her safe space. The killer’s mother and the Priest, both blame themselves for not recognising the murderous signs.
The murderer’s brother Tuomas never revealed this ‘tragedy’ to his new bride, Stela and the Waitress, Tereza, who lost her daughter Markéta, lives a life immersed in constant unforgiving grief. Markéta is revealed as one of the students who bullied the killer, goading him as ‘frog boy’.
It is all hard emotion and there are very few moments of hope apart from the very poignant ending where Markéta appears again begging her mother Tereza to let her go and disappears from the scene for a last time. The role of Markéta central to the performance, is sung by the Finno Ugric folk singer Vilma Jää. Markéta stands out from the rest of the cast using her distinctive voice being the technique of the Viena Karelian Yoik which is a herd calling of the indigenous Sámi people from Northern Finland. It is a vocal style woven into the consistent and unified fabric of Saariaho’s music, but there is a wish for more intimacy similar to Markéta’s goodbye to her mother.
Perhaps the evening was more dramatically powerful than musically. The score, however, with its strong percussion moments and multilingual text provided substantial emotional potential as the music and drama weaved its path through 100 minutes of this performance.
The Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki was in full control throughout the evening, and the chorus and orchestra revelled in the thrilling drama unfolding on stage. The subject matter made this an opera for our time and the modern sonority of the music was its perfect accompaniment.
David Buchler
