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.
