If Kaija Saariaho’s four previous operas have had one thing in common, it has been their refusal to settle for obvious dramatic impact, or to favour theatrical effect over musical intensity. From her very first stage work, L’Amour de Loin, it has been the beauty of the scores, the iridescent instrumental colours with which she surrounds and clothes her vocal lines, that have seemed more important than the narrative they are supporting.
Innocence, which has arrived at Covent Garden almost two years after its world premiere in Aix-en-Provence, promised to be different: there’s more than enough emotional potential in the story to fuel the most involving of music dramas. Sofi Oksanen’s original Finnish libretto, given a multilingual makeover by Aleksi Barrière, is set in contemporary Finland and deals with the aftermath of a school shooting in which 10 students and their teacher were killed. Tereza, a waitress at a wedding reception, recognises the groom (Tuomas) as the brother of the boy who 10 years earlier had committed the atrocity in which her daughter, Markéta, was one of the victims.
As the opera unfolds across 105 minutes, survivors relive their experiences of the violence and the conflicting emotions that have haunted them ever since, while after being confronted by Tereza, the family try once again to come to terms with what their unnamed son has done. It emerges that Tuomas’s bride, Stela, knows nothing of this darkest of family secrets; the horror of it all is inevitably left unresolved, and it’s only Tereza who finally achieves some kind of absolution, coming to terms with the ghost of her dead daughter.
Dramatically at least, the story is presented as thoughtfully and sensitively as it could be, both in Oksanen’s text and in director Simon Stone’s staging, which steadfastly resists any temptation to turn it into grand guignol, while Chloe Lamford’s revolving, multi-roomed set can be both the hotel where the wedding reception is taking place, and the international school in which the shootings occurred. But once again, Saariaho’s score keeps the drama at arm’s length. Everything unfolds at the same, unvaried pace, and her unfailingly beautiful orchestral music, full of shimmering sounds and tantalising shards of melody, never quickens or takes control to heighten the drama, even though it’s all beautifully realised by the Royal Opera orchestra under Susanna Mälkki.
The vocal lines for the main protagonists (the surviving students have spoken roles) rarely venture beyond Sprechgesang into fully fledged arioso, and do little to bring the figures into sharper focus, so they more or less remain ciphers; even such outstanding singers as Christopher Purves as the father-in-law, Sandrine Piau as his wife, and Jenny Carlstedt as Tereza, struggle to make their characters three-dimensional. Ultimately it is only the writing for Markéta, the waitress’s dead daughter, that stands out. She sings in the Finno-Ugric folk style of northern Finland, vividly projected by Vilma Jää. Her farewell to her mother, the final scene, is perhaps the only moment when the opera becomes genuinely touching; dealing with a subject of such harrowing depth and contemporary relevance there really should have been many more such moments.
• Innocence is in rep at the Royal Opera House, London, until 4 May.
