One doesn’t normally look to the Metropolitan Opera to address hot-button social issues. But that’s exactly what they’ve done with its company premiere of Innocence, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s opera about a school shooting and its aftermath. This searing 2021 work — which premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and represents a co-production with the Dutch National Opera, The Royal Opera, the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, and the San Francisco Opera — demonstrates the Met’s willingness to take the sort of daring artistic chances necessary to prevent it from calcifying.
The opera’s multilanguage libretto by Sofi Oksanen and Aleski Barriere interweaves two separate but intertwined narratives. The first is set in an international school in Helsinki where an armed shooter, one of its students, goes on a homicidal rampage resulting in multiple deaths. The other takes place a decade later, at the wedding reception of the shooter’s brother (Myles Mykkanen) whose bride is unaware of his checkered family history. When one of the restaurant’s waitresses (Joyce DiDonato) recognizes the bridegroom, it sets off a series of emotional confrontations forcing the family members to deal with their tragic past.
Meanwhile, we hear from the shooting’s victims, living and dead, as they describe their thoughts, actions and feelings both during the tragic event and in the intervening years. Among the deceased is the waitress’ teenage daughter Marketa (Finnish folk/pop singer Vilma Jaa, employing a keening, non-operatic vocal style) who constantly haunts her mother’s imagination.
The taut work, running a mere 105 uninterrupted minutes, is fraught with both musical and dramatic tension. The latter is particularly abetted by the brilliant staging of Simon Stone (Yerma) that keeps the action moving at a brisk pace, and the phenomenal two-level set design by Chloe Lamford that depicts both the school and the wedding restaurant while revolving on a turntable. It’s a logistical marvel, the settings changing with breathtaking speed as it reveals different locations that become increasingly bloodstained as the carnage continues (we don’t actually see any of the violence). The constant movement accentuates the inexorably tragic nature of the events being depicted.
The music by Saariaho, who died in 2023, hardly makes for easy listening, with its highly percussive, brass-heavy orchestrations providing constant jolts. Employing a wide variety of musical styles ranging from traditional operatic idioms to the half-singing, half-sung technique known as sprechstimme (largely performed by Lucy Shelton as a schoolteacher, making her Met debut at age 82), the score fits the shocking material perfectly even if unlikely to wind up in heavy rotation on your music streaming service. Conductor Susanna Malkki, a frequent collaborator of the composer, expertly handles the score’s volcanic emotional shifts, with the singers performing in various languages including English, French, German, Czech, Spanish, and Finnish.
The performers cope with their intense musical and dramatic demands expertly, with Met stalwart DiDonato heartbreaking as the still grief-stricken mother and Rod Gilfry as the shooter’s guilt-ridden father. Also outstanding are Julie Hega as the perpetrator’s complicit friend and Mykkanen as the brother who makes a shocking revelation late in the storyline.
Innocence is not an easy, relaxing night at the opera. But it proves that what many consider to be a dying art form can deal with contemporary issues with thrilling musical and theatrical urgency.
Innocence opened April 6, 2026, at The Metropolitan Opera and runs through April 29. Tickets and information: metopera.org
