New York Classical Review

Ten years after Kaija Saariaho’s ravishing L’Amour de Loin made its Metropolitan Opera premiere (it has yet to be revived), the Finnish composer’s final opera has made it to the Met. Innocence, which had its world premiere in 2021, opened Monday night, with director Simon Stone bringing his original production and placing it on top of the giant lazy Susan on the Met stage. 

Conductor Susanna Mälkki, one of Saariaho’s most authoritative interpreters, also connects this run to the original performances. The effect of the story and music is quietly roiling, at times disturbing yet ultimately transforming. 

Innocence is an ensemble work. There are singing roles, like the waitress Tereza (mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato), the betrothed couple Stela (soprano Jacquelyn Stucker) and Tuomas (tenor Myles Mykkanen), and Tuomas’ parents, soprano Kathleen Kim and baritone Rod Gilfry. Tereza’s daughter, Markéta, is sung by Finnish pop vocalist Vilma Jää (Met debut), with her sound and music in the keening, yelping style of indigenous Finnish music.

What Saariaho’s moody, atmospheric score presents is a story that runs in two parallel parts: the present is the wedding of Stela and Tuomas; the past is a school shooting. The connection is the shooter is Tuomas’ brother, and Markéta, one of the victims. The actors play other victims, describing their fate in what for them is the present, and survivors who, like the teacher, are haunted by their past. Then there is Markéta, a ghost who inhabits the past and haunts the present. 

This is the key to the whole opera. Markéta sings from the past, and communicates with her mother Tereza (in the sense that memories of her are in Tereza’s mind) in the present; her mother is serving at Stela’s and Tuomas’ wedding, and knows who the bridegroom is. Not only is the character of Markéta the link between the stories, but her music, and Jää’s piping, intense energy, is the complex emotional heart of the opera. 

Another important character, the Teacher, is performed in sprechstimme by soprano Lucy Shelton (surprisingly only now making her Met debut). There is also a group of actors, with non-singing dialogue, and Sofi Oksana’s libretto is in multiple languages.

This is not an aria/set-piece score, it’s a constant murmuring flow of washes of color and bits of detail from brass and woodwinds that is closer to Robert Ashley than anything else. Heard for the first time, the prologue seemed hesitant at first, the orchestra seeming to not want to play with too much force, but they quickly grew assured under Mälkki’s always-clear leadership. Quite different from L’Amour, the music is a frame that carries the voices along in time, and Jää’s vocal parts are both angelic and aggressive—switching from crooning to hectoring in an instant, her charisma was gripping and threatening.

That is the feeling of Innocence, a combination of fascination that subversively worms its way into the listener, genuinely moving emotional force inseparable from shuddering, alien sensations. Stone’s set is a cool modernist building in constant rotation, showing modular spaces that could be classrooms, dining rooms, offices and living rooms, the supply closets and bathrooms where characters hide. With the vibrant acting and often beautiful singing—there is not a great amount of operatic material but DiDonato had her typical full, floating sound, and Gilfry his easy, clear vocal communication—contained within, this was also a metaphorical prison for the characters.

The drama in Innocence is how the score and libretto bring the past and present together. This is superficially like a mystery story, and where the opera disappoints is when it uses the conventions of one. A priest appears (bass Stephen Milling), to deliver expositions on what is happening that are clumsy both musically and dramatically. His music is an inchoate mix of sprechstimme and song and Milling had a surprisingly difficult time negotiating it, as if he couldn’t find a comfortable range or focus.

At a narratively climactic moment, Oksana’s poetic libretto turns prosaic with more exposition that holds no surprises but might satisfy an itch someone has for the satisfaction of clichéd plot over story. It’s the kind of thing that would be unremarkable in a 19th century verismo opera, but seems out of place in Innocence, a skillful disciplined, and vastly more experimental work than one usually finds in mainstream opera houses. Saariaho masterfully took what is truly avant-garde theater and wrapped it in a sound world that has the comfort and mystery of deep sleep. 

Saariaho’s haunting score, the seeming normality of Stone’s set—it is a rare complete building, and characters move through doorways from one room to another—and Mel Page’s conventional, everyday costumes combine to create the uneasy sensation of a horror story moving along with deliberate inevitability. There is something disturbing, probably unintentional, in how this looks on the Met stage, as the set only fills a fraction of the space and is surrounded by darkness. As much as Innocence feels somewhat physically out of place at the Met, so the contrast between the staging and the vast venue work to its expressive benefit.

Innocence is an opera that stands with the novels of J. G. Ballard and the films of Bertrand Bonello in exploring how contemporary violence transforms lives and perceptions of reality. It is a small, intimate work that in its coolly incandescent way, burrows its way into the listener’s mind and heart.

Innocence runs through April 29 metopera.org