Review: INNOCENCE – ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2025 at Adelaide Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Tuesday 4th March 2025.

Presented by the Adelaide Festival in association with State Opera South Australia, the Adelaide premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s (14th October 1952 - 2nd June 2023) final opera, Innocence, with the original Finnish libretto by Sofi Oksanen and a multilingual libretto, reflecting the international school in which the past event took place, by her son, Aleksi Barrière, conducted by Clément Mao-Takacs, and directed by Simon Stone, is receiving great praise from audiences, and from me. It has enjoyed full houses and had great reviews all around the world since its world premiere on 3rd July 2021 at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in Aix-en-Provence. The opera is a single act of five scenes, through-composed, without a break between each scene.

It takes place in Finland at the wedding feast of Tuomas and Stela. His parents, Henrik and Patricia, debate whether to tell Stela about a dark incident from a decade earlier that they refer to as “the tragedy”. Taking place at the same time in the same space, we see what happened then, and also how it affected the survivors today. There are, thus, three narratives running consecutively, independent of each other, but together creating the full picture.

As the programme contains a detailed synopsis, a common thing with operas, and as there are probably others that can be read on the Internet, it is giving nothing away to tell readers that Tuomas’s younger brother, now released from prison and given a new name, took a gun into school and killed a teacher and ten students.

With one of the wedding caterers unable to work through illness, the last-minute replacement happens to be a Czech waitress, Tereza, the mother of Markéta, one of those killed. Markéta appears as one of the children replaying the incident in a form of flashback, and as a spectre, interacting with her mother.

The work begins down in the bass clef, with an ominous rumble, other instruments ebbing and flowing as the overture proceeds, adding complexity and increasing in volume until the curtain rises, revealing Chloe Lamford’s stunning set, a two-storey cube with several rooms on each level. Over the next 105 minutes, it slowly revolves to and fro, and pauses occasionally for longer sections of the opera.

Meanwhile, hidden behind the set, a large team of black-clad crew members swiftly and silently change and remove furnishings, a bit at a time. This is no mean feat, as one of the rooms is a commercial kitchen, with a huge, heavy, double-door refrigerator, and a very solid multi-burner stove, another is a toilet and washroom, and another has the long table and chairs for the wedding. There is also the schoolroom full of desks and chairs. By the final curtain, the set is nothing but bare rooms, with some bloodstained walls. The crew took a bow alongside the performers.

James Farncombe’s lighting design contributes enormously to the atmosphere of the opera and Timo Kurkikangas’s sound design blends subtly with the music. Choreographer, Arco Renz, amplifies in movement what is being sung and adds background movement from the ensemble while soloists are singing, evoking an understanding of the trauma suffered by survivors.
 
This opera extensively uses a technique known as Sprechstimme (speech voice), attributed to Arnold Schoenberg, although he refined something at the start of the 20th Century that had already been used in the late 19th Century by Engelbert Humperdinck. It is a form of speaking that follows the music, but it is not sung. Schoenberg’s pupil, Alban Berg, used the technique in one of my favourite operas, Wozzek. It also employs Sprechgesang, which is more closely related to recitative, where the dialogue is sung, and which also harks back to 18th Century singspiel. These techniques are used very effectively here to heighten the drama.

To begin with, the survivors of the school shooting, the six students and the teacher, each recount their ongoing traumas, their difficulties in coping, even after ten years. The Teacher (Cecilia) Lucy Shelton, Student One (Markéta) Erika Hammarberg, Student Two (Lilly) Christina AF Klinteberg Herresthal, Student Three (Iris) Julie Hega, Student Four (Anton) Rowan Kievits, Student Five (Jerónimo) Camilo Delgado Diaz, and Student Six (Alexia) Marina Dumont, form one ensemble, each having an individual character and response to the past incident. They portray these characters with intensity, each in the language of their character: Finnish, Czech, French, Romanian, Swedish, German, Spanish, and Greek, as well as English.

A turn of the set and we see the wedding feast taking place in a smart restaurant, with the kitchen next to the dining room. The Mother-in-Law (Patricia), sung by Claire de Sévigné, and The Father-in-Law (Henrik), sung by Tuomas Pursio, reveal that The Bride (Stela), played by Faustine de Monès, has not been told of the incident, and that The Bridegroom (Tuomas), played by Sean Panikkar, is the brother of the shooter. They form the second ensemble.

Patricia, Henrik, and Tuomas see this wedding as a new start, a way forward, but the past refuses to let go. Henrik wonders if he is at fault, pushing his boy towards manhood to soon, and teaching him to shoot. He now disowns his youngest son. Patricia misses the boy, and suggests to Henrik that they should have invited him to the wedding. Tuomas Pursio and Claire de Sévigné give fine performances as the couple whose marriage, clearly is under strain, with conflicts about how they view their son and now relate to him.

Tuomas wants to keep it from his bride, and hopes that she will never find out. Sean Panikkar conveys all of that apprehension and anguish at what might happen should she ever discover the family secret. Faustine de Monès, as Stela, is oblivious to all of this and displays her character's mental turmoil with great emotion when the truth is revealed.

The Waitress (Tereza), sung by Jenny Carlstedt, realises, to her horror, that the family whose wedding she is serving is that of the boy who killed her daughter, Markéta, played by Erika Hammarberg. The role of Markéta is unique in that it uses, as we are told in the programme, Finno-Ugric folk music techniques of the Sámi people of far northern Finland. Jenny Carlstedt displays every bit of the shock of suddenly, unexpectedly confronting the family of the child who killed her daughter, instantly stripping away any attempts that she had made to overcome the tragedy over the last ten years, showing us her grief welling up alongside her anger.

The other person at the feast is The Priest, sung by Teddy Tahu Rhodes, whose attempts to help are ineffectual, resulting in his frustration. He is wonderful in the role.

A group of actors: Issy Commber, Laura Henderson, Nicholas Cannon, Liam Goodes, Nicky Tsz Tung Li, Rhys Stewart, and Ollie Xu, play wedding guests, the chef, and other silent roles, no less important than the singing characters.

It hardly needs saying, as it is said so often, that the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is a superb collection of musicians capable of tackling any score placed in front of them. The music for this opera is extremely complex and demanding but, as always, the orchestra, under the incisive conducting of Clément Mao-Takacs, gives a wonderful performance. The State Opera Chorus, too, bring their usual high level of performance to the production.

This magnificent production fully deserved the extended applause that followed. With only one more performance, if there are tickets available, rush to book a seat. This will be talked about for a long time to come.

Photography, Andrew Beveridge.