"Innocence" at SF Opera

The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's final opera, Innocence, had its American premiere at the San Francisco Opera this month and it's a stunner. There are three more performances next week on Sunday the 16th, Tuesday the 18th, and Friday the 21st. If you have not seen it yet, buy a ticket now (click here) because this production is destined to become legendary. (All production photos are by Cory Weaver.)

I didn't know much about the opera beforehand other than it involved a wedding party and a school shooting, and that's all you need to know too. The multilingual libretto is a brilliant work by the Finnish-Estonian novelist Sofi Oksanen in collaboration with Aleksi Barrière, Saariaho's son who has been creating librettos for choral mini-operas for his composer mother since he was a teenager (click here for a WiseMusic article). The opera's complex, multilingual ensemble of characters bleed into each other seamlessly through time and trauma, and though it's confusing at first trying to keep track of them, by the shattering last act of the opera you know something about everyone.

The production by Australian director Simon Stone is a brilliant, shape-shifting wonder, helped immeasurably by the gorgeous, two-story creation of UK set designer Chloe Lamford. The huge structure rotates in both directions throughout the intermissionless, hour-and-three-quarter opera, which is completely destabilizing in a way that physically underlines the many themes of the opera.

A small, invisible stage crew army were given their own bow at the curtain calls and deserved it. They were responsible for the exact, noiseless rotations while slowly stripping the rooms of furniture and props as the story advanced.

Two of the more striking performances are by singers whose music was written specifically for them by Saariaho, and which they have repeated at the four previous European productions over the last three years. The legendary 80-year-old contemporary music soprano Lucy Shelton spoke, sang, whispered and howled as The Teacher whose vocation is destroyed by the school shooting. The Finnish ethno pop singer Vilma Jää sings the role of Student #1 (Markeeta) and she commands the stage every time she appears (check out her music videos here). She is also given the prettiest music in the opera.

Saariaho's original interest was in a multilingual story with many kinds of voices, and she composed a score that contains multitudes with every kind of singing and speaking and language combined. This could easily have been an incomprehensible mess but instead it's a masterpiece that's not like any opera that has come before it.

The operatic soloist characters from the wedding party were all excellent. My favorites were the women: mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose as the outraged Waitress (not pictured), Claire de Sévigné as the impossibly chic Mother-in-Law, and Lilian Farahani as The Bride who is one of the few truly innocent characters in the opera.

The orchestra was conducted by Clément Mao-Takacs who has been with this opera since its conception, and the San Francisco Opera orchestra sounded exquisite. My favorite music in the opera was for a large offstage chorus that alternates between commenting, underlining and creating background soundscapes. The SF Opera Chorus, above, was superb.