Kaija Saariaho's Innocence premieres at Aix-en-Provence festival

The Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence (through July 25, 2021) featured the premiere of Innocence, an opera by composer Kaija Saariaho with a libretto by novelist Sofi Oksanen, conducted by Susanna Mälkki and directed by Simon Stone. Inspired by the 2007 Tuusula school shooting in Finland, the work focuses on victims rather than the perpetrator. The polyphonic thriller unfolds during a wedding banquet where a Romanian bride discovers her brother-in-law was the shooter. Saariaho, who received a standing ovation in a wheelchair pushed by folk singer Vilma Jää, blends nine languages, spoken and sung voices, and kulning techniques. The festival also featured Silvia Costa's staging of Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, renamed "Black Swan Theory," performed by Sébastien Daucé and Ensemble Correspondances, and Stone's production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde set in contemporary Paris. The festival's programming, conceived before the pandemic, grapples with mortality and grief.