“I ...
I ...
I can’t ...
.go to work,” one stammers in German. “I can’t board a plane .
.. I can’t sit with my back to the door,” another says in Spanish.
They are living ghosts, traumatized survivors of a school shooting that occurred 10 years earlier, but the memory of which intrudes like an unwelcome guest on a wedding celebration taking place in the present. So begins “Innocence,” the last opera by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, who died of brain cancer last year. First seen at the Aix-en-Provence festival in France in 2021, it is now receiving its U.
S. premiere in San Francisco beginning June 1. For 100 intermission-less minutes on a split-level rotating set, the two worlds play out, separately at first but gradually intertwining as we learn the tragic connections between the bridegroom’s family and the long-ago events at an international school.
“She wanted to create a kind of thriller,” said Clément Mao-Takacs, who will conduct the opera in the San Francisco Opera. “It’s very focused, which keeps the audience’s mouths wide open and the heart beating from the first note.” As for the score, Louise Bakker, who is directing the production, said Saariaho had created “atmosphere as much as music.
“Don’t expect long, romantic Puccini melodies,” she said. “That’s not what this is at all. But the beauty of this piece is in its truth and in its precision and what you can bring from that.
” Simon Stone, who directed the premiere and .
