There may be countless pop songwriters around, but there are very
few composers of classical music nowadays, especially women. There are two good
reasons for that: the understandable difference in the market size of the two
genres, and the fact that writing classical is significantly more complex, more
mind and time consuming than coming up with pop songs. It is another game
altogether.
اضافة اعلان
Kaija Saariaho is a 69-year-old composer of contemporary, modern
classical music who hails from Finland but is based in France. Her latest opus
is an opera in five acts titled Innocence, completed in 2018. A noteworthy performance
was given last year at the Aix-en-Provence festival in France. There is an
upcoming one scheduled for October 2022, at the Finnish National Opera in
Helsinki.
The only way for me to watch the opera was the high-definition replay
found on the website of the German-French cultural TV channel Arte. It was
easily accessible from Jordan, without the need to use a VPN.
The synopsis: a wedding is taking place on a summer evening in the 2000s, in Helsinki. A past
drama slowly, gradually unfolds. Years ago, the groom’s brother had murdered
several students and their teacher during a rampage in a school. The bride is
clueless and was told that the groom did not even have a brother. The waitress
attending the celebration is the mother of one of the dead schoolgirls. She
recognizes the groom and his parents. Her reactions trigger a mix of flashbacks
that makes the living characters reminisce, converse with the dead and between
themselves, until the final and dramatic climax, when the wedding is cancelled.
The atmosphere is more about grief,
dreams, and communicating with the dead than about violence or revenge.
The main singing language is English and additional languages are
Finnish, Czech, French, Romanian, Swedish, German, Spanish, Greek, depending on
the character. The original Finnish libretto was written by Sofi Oksanen and
the multilingual one by Aleksi Barrière.
So far, my favorite operas, in the chronological order they were
composed, have been The Magic Flute by Mozart, La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi,
and Carmen by George Bizet. For someone used to these three composers and their
operatic style, Innocence constitutes a frank departure from tradition, and may
be more difficult to like and appreciate, especially at first viewing.
It took me
several minutes to get into the musical mood and the unique style. Once
in, I was irresistibly attracted and kept watching for the entire 105-minute
duration of Saariaho’s opera, without being distracted or losing interest for a
second.
I found the instrumental parts to be even more compelling than the vocal, but it is only a personal point of view. This is not to underestimate in any way the remarkable quality and the merit of all the vocalists. ...
There are many half-sung, half-spoken parts, with the music only
playing in the background. The dialog consists of regular prose, not of rhyming poetry. The opera does not include
any lyrical arias like in the three above-mentioned operas. Most of the time,
the music is played rubato, as it is often in the soundtracks of movies. The
choir parts are hauntingly beautiful. The composition bears the usual
dissonances often heard in modern classical music, but perhaps less than in
other similar compositions. It is also easier to follow than serial or
dodecaphonic modern music. This is neither Iannis Xenakis nor Arnold Schönberg,
after all.
At time, the music sounds as suspenseful as in an Alfred Hitchcock’s
thriller. Usage of
sharp, shrieking sounds and subtle percussions adds to the gloomy mood. The
staging actually is constructed like a movie, with frequent flashbacks, so as
to reveal the story, the plot, little by little. The past and the present are sometimes blended
in a surreal manner, with the living talking to the dead.
Again, one has
the overall impression that the opera is more like a movie than a live
performance on stage, with an exceptionally beautiful and quite original soundtrack.
I found the instrumental parts to be even more compelling than the
vocal, but it is only a personal point of view. This is not to underestimate in
any way the remarkable quality and the merit of all the vocalists, starting
with Czech mezzo-soprano and diva Magdalena Kožená who plays the essential role
of the waitress. They must be recognized if only for the very difficult parts
they had to sing. Modern music is always a challenge for opera artists.
I am not sure if,
and to what extent, Innocence will be a popular opera one day, simply because
it is, well, somewhat esoteric. But it sure is a great work, brilliantly,
intelligently, and masterfully composed. Whether in terms of the plot, the
music, the languages used, or the stage performance, it is difficult to do
better in terms of innovation.
I
cannot but agree with Reinhard Brembeck, a musicologist who writes for the
Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Germany, who said that Saariaho was “the
greatest master of opera today”.
Jean-Claude Elias is a computer engineer and a classically trained pianist and guitarist. He has been regularly writing IT articles, reviewing music albums, and covering concerts for more than 30 years.
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