Opera

Innocence

Kaija Saariaho

Can the past be denied and memories erased? After a mass shooting at an international school, pupils, parents and teachers are left horrified and traumatised. The teenage perpetrator is committed to a psychiatric ward. Ten years later, Stela is celebrating her wedding to Tuomas, who she met in her home country of Romania, together with his parents and a priest.

She is so happy that she doesn’t ask why there are so few guests. But the waitress hints that there is something Stela doesn’t know – that her groom has another brother.

„Innocence“ is the fifth and final opera by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952 –2023). Following its acclaimed premiere at the d’Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2021, it went on to enjoy great success in London, Helsinki and Amsterdam. This work deals with acutely relevant questions: What happens to a society after such a gruesome and disturbing act of violence? How can trauma be overcome? Together with librettist Sofi Oksanen and dramaturge Aleksi Barrière, Kaija Saariaho created a gripping yet poignant psychological thriller that relentlessly unpicks the characters’ entangled culpability, layer by layer, while leaving unanswered the question of each person’s guilt or innocence.

Opera in five acts
Finnish original libretto by Sofi Oksanen. Multilingual translation & dramaturgy by Aleksi Barrière

Performed in English, Finnish, Czech, French, Romanian, Swedish, German, Spanish and Greek with German and English supertitles

Premiere
15. March 2025,

No further performances in the current season.

Premiere cast