Innocence

Opera in five acts by Kaija Saariaho | Finnish original libretto by Sofi Oksanen, multilingual libretto by Aleksi Barrière with German and English surtitles

Duration: 1 3/4 hours | from 16 years

The best day of your life? Not at all. What begins as a festive wedding turns into an abyss of silence, guilt and repressed violence. The bride discovers the dark secret of her groom's family. Ten years ago, his brother went on a killing spree at an international school. While the crime still reverberates many years later, the questions remain the same: Why? How can this trauma be overcome? Could something have been done differently?

With her fifth and final opera, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952 - 2023) created a piece of music theater that is as uncompromising as it is contemporary. Since its acclaimed premiere at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in 2021, this work has captivated audiences and critics alike at Europe's major opera houses. In a musical chamber play of oppressive intensity, fragmentary memories, overlapping perspectives, repressed and unspoken guilt unfold. This opera deliberately refuses simple answers. Instead, it opens up a resonance space in which responsibility, repression and individual guilt are not closed, but are constantly renegotiated.