San Francisco Opera: Innocence

(Catching up on last June's offerings at San Francisco Opera, part 3. . . .)

I was at San Francisco Opera for the American premiere of Innocence, Kaija Saariaho's final opera (libretto by Sofi Oksanen & Aleksi Barrière). I realized right away that I needed to see it again, so I was also at the final performance. I don't generally go to the same production twice, due to my preference for expensive seats & my low tolerance for audiences, but this performance was clearly something special, like seeing a modern classic emerging newborn but already complete, & it was worth seeing not only twice but multiple times; in a work as subtle & detailed as this one, each viewing brings you in deeper.

We begin at a wedding reception in Finland; the bride & groom met as students abroad. Strange things begin to emerge about the wedding – why is it so small? where are the family & friends? is the groom's father drinking maybe a little too much, & why are his mother's vocal lines so consistently in an almost hysterically high tessitura? We learn that the groom's brother, ten years before, shot up the town's International School. A waitress assigned to the reception at the last minute turns out to know the family, from the time before. Her daughter was one of the shooter's victims. As we move forward in time with the reception (will the bride be told the family secret? will the family finally pull together, or fly apart?) we also move backwards, through flashbacks, to the day of the shooting, what led up to it, & its ongoing repercussions.

It was an astute move setting this opera somewhere other than the homeland of school shootings, the United States. Setting it here would make the story inevitably about the sickness of American culture (guns & money over children's safety, every time) & a corrupt & ineffective political situation that bars the obviously essential reforms. Instead, it is a deeper examination of what humans anywhere & anytime do to each other.

The story is fragmented; initially we hear from many of the victims (not all of them still living); they speak in a Babel-like cloud of different languages, describing everyday things, like going for a run or meeting people in public, & how they now struggle with them. Gradually we realize they are describing the aftereffects of the decade-old shooting at their school. But about halfway through, the libretto takes a twist; we start to hear the background of the shooter, his emotional oddities, the early warning signs that were ignored, the ridicule of his classmates & even a horrifying example of a sexually humiliating incident they perpetrated on him. None of this excuses the murders, of course, but as we go in deeper we gradually realize the terrible irony of the title: no one here is innocent. Innocence may be a thing that simply doesn't exist among humans, though they pretend it does, mostly to excuse themselves & condemn others.

A particularly striking character in this regard is Marketa (Vilma Jää), the waitress' murdered daughter, a talented musician. She is a tall, attractive blonde. We first see her through her mourning mother's eyes, as a wonderful, talented person cruelly cut off from the life she might have led. And that remains true. But we also hear from the groom's mother that the wonderful Marketa had a cruel edge, & made up a song mocking the future shooter for his ugly frog face, which she sang to the students repeatedly, because they enjoyed it & it made them laugh. The phantom Marketa appears & mostly shrugs off the song & how it affected its object of ridicule. I wonder if she isn't in some way meant as an image of the Artist in the world, following her own path (her music is distinctly different, with a sort of Nordic folk-song sound that is striking & memorable) but also eager for applause & the spotlight, even at the cost of someone else's feelings: a creator, yes, but also a destroyer; an indifferent, & therefore morally compromised or compromisable, figure.

The shooter himself never appears on stage, though he dominates the proceedings, nor do we see violence so much as its emotionally violent after-effects. [A correction: my memory was faulty & the shooter does appear on stage in this production; see Lisa Hirsch's comment below.] We do meet the shooter's accomplices, though both dropped out before the actual shooting. One I won't mention, as it's one of the more startling revelations, but another is a young woman who befriends the shooter & has some problems of her own, including a creepy stepfather. It's a mark of the libretto's deft touch that his creepiness is presented only through her perceptions; there's something there, but how much? We are not given easy or obvious explanations. There is the family priest, but he does not have much comfort to dispense; instead, he is haunted by the sense that he should have acted on warning signs he noticed & by the inadequacy of any counseling or comfort he can offer. The opera closes with the phantom Marketa urging her mother to stop some of her obsessive mourning rituals; you could take this as some sort of healing or closure, or perhaps simply as time moving on, & memory moving on, though the sorrow is embedded soul-deep until one also passes away.

A summary does not do justice to the libretto, which struck me as comparable to late Ibsen in its psychological nuance & mythopoetic power. It could stand on its own without the music, though the music adds a richness, a depth & complexity, that only opera can achieve. Saariaho's score is muscular & crepuscular; the tension is sustained throughout & all handled with great subtlety. At my second performance, when I was seated in front of the brass & percussion – I was on the other side for my first performance – I noticed how skillfully certain lines were highlighted by a trumpet. (Much as I love Britten & Billy Budd, I wince every time Claggart snarls Let him crawl to that isn't-he-evil orchestration – there's none of that here). This score is a magnificent final addition to Saariaho's rich legacy. [a correction: this was Saariaho's last work for the stage, but there's a trumpet concerto she composed after it; see Lisa Hirsch's comment below]

Another reason I wanted to have a second experience of this magnificent work is that, even though it felt as if I were watching the emergence of a full-blown masterpiece, a piece that seemed both already set among the classics & yet also completely new, it also seemed like something that might not get revived that often: the unsparing vision that gives it force also makes it difficult, even at times horrifying, to experience. I heard a few people compare it to Elektra, but that has a big star role. There's none of that here. Innocence is very much an ensemble piece. There are no detachable arias. The emotions it gives rise to are complicated & haunting. I very much hope I'm wrong about this, as this opera deserves many revivals. New operas are always a risk, & San Francisco Opera deserves all praise for co-commissioning this bold work.

I feel I've just scratched the surface of what should be said here. But let me salute the ensemble: conductor Clément Mao-Takacs, Lilian Farahani as the Bride, Miles Mykkanen as the Groom, Rod Gilfry as his Father, Claire de Sévigné as his Mother, Ruxandra Donose as the substitute Waitress, Lucy Shelton as the Teacher, Kristinn Sigmundsson as the family Priest, Rowan Klevits as the Student Anton, Camilo Delgado Díaz as the Student Jeronimo, Beate Mordal as the Student Lily, Marina Dumont as the Student Alexia, Vilma Jää as the Student Marketa, Julie Hega as the Student Iris, & the actors Oksana Barrios, Jordan Covington, Victoria Fong, Sam Hannum, Jalen Justice, Rachael Richman, Brian Soutner, Kevin Walton.

If I ever pull together a list of the greatest opera performances I've ever seen, Innocence will have to be on that list.