It’s a cliche as regular as clockwork in the aftermath of an inexplicable tragedy: “That was the day we lost our innocence”. But do we really start from a place of innocence or are we always somehow complicit in acts of violence? Do perpetrators attack from without, or are they an expression of something abominable within the community, its monstrous id? These questions haunt the halls of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s extraordinary contemporary opera as surely as they’ll disturb the dreams of its audience.
Innocence opens with a deeply ominous series of chords from the lowest keys on the piano, as swirling strings and smirking bassoons mix with the trills and runs from the higher woodwinds, punctuated by the occasional crash of percussion. Atmospheric doesn’t begin to cover it. The music has shades of Bartók and Górecki, with more than a little of that master of dread, György Ligeti. The singers slink on as the curtain rises, explaining that they “can’t go to work any more”, that they “can’t have my back to the door”. Trauma animates every flinch; these people have clearly been exposed to unspeakable horror.
We soon learn we’re at a wedding celebration, 10 years after a mass school shooting that implicates the groom’s family but has been kept from the bride. Only the waitress who serves the drinks threatens the mood, as she stalks the family gathered around the nuptial table. It emerges that she’s the mother of one of the victims, unaware when she took the job that she’d be walking into the den that bred the monster. But all that has been suppressed will rise up to wreak havoc, and the effects of violence can’t be simply willed away.
As the events of the wedding begin to merge with the tragedy itself, so the polyphony in the score shifts in and out of harmony and dissonance. Saariaho’s ability to conjure vocal lines of startling originality is matched by the psychological precision of Sofi Oksanen and Aleksi Barrière’s libretto. Various languages – Finnish, English, French, Spanish and German – are used not just to vary the sonic palette but to broaden the implications. The result is a work of staggering depth and multiplicity of the kind you rarely find in opera.
Director Simon Stone builds and sustains a vision for this piece that is frequently astonishing; it’s certainly impossible to imagine it being done in any other way. His set – designed with stylistic virtuosity by Chloe Lamford and cleverly lit by James Farncombe – is a mid-century building on a slow revolve, partitioned into separate but connecting rooms that completely transform as the opera progresses. A restaurant becomes a classroom in the time it takes for a single rotation. It’s a marvel of stagecraft, but it never overwhelms the narrative or falls victim to gimmickry.
Rooms are vital in Innocence, their tendency to entrap and isolate the very people they’re designed to protect. Spaces alter not just physically but psychologically before our eyes, and the characters who creep through them seem simultaneously solid and spectral. It could easily devolve into abstraction, become confusing or abstruse, but Stone never loses sight of the characters’ mental states or emotional stakes. For all the blending of timelines, the clarity and verisimilitude doesn’t waver.
Thirteen individual characters make up the cast, and each is perfectly delineated (and beautifully sung). Faustine de Monès and Sean Panikkar are the bride and groom, achingly compromised by looming revelations, desperately holding to an idea of love that looks increasingly like denial. Claire de Sévigné and Jenny Carlstedt are both excellent as the two brittle but stalwart mothers, carrying the dreadful burdens of loss and guilt. Teddy Tahu Rhodes is a wonderfully resigned local priest, and Lucy Shelton is heartbreaking as the teacher who couldn’t save her charges and knows she’ll never teach again.
The kids – who we see bloodied and sacrificed in the past, hopelessly wrecked in the present – are expertly drawn, their anguish manifested in every muscle. Rowan Kievits is a jittery mess, and Julie Hega makes a terrifyingly articulate accomplice, blowing massive holes in the idea of the victims as guileless innocents. Best of all, for the ambiguity of her motivations, the strength of her presence and the beguiling eccentricity and ethereal purity of her voice, is Erika Hammarberg as the key victim, Markéta. It’s virtually impossible to take your eyes off her.
Innocence is a monumental achievement, bold and profoundly responsive to contemporary life. Its characters are deeply felt and frighteningly accessible, adrift in a revolving nightmare they can’t escape. The score is wondrously strange, capable of blending euphony and discord into an integrated, almost sacred whole; it is magnificently conducted by Clément Mao-Takacs and luminously played by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Opera is often considered a moribund art form, but this shows how essential it can be. You may lose any vestige of innocence you had going in, but you’ll emerge more fully human from the experience.
Innocence is on now as part of the Adelaide festival, at the Festival theatre until 5 March.
