US EditionAt Met Opera, life after a school shooting takes center stage
The 110-minute opera examines trauma, stigma and grief after a school attack, and it is the Met’s second American staging after San Francisco Opera in 2024.
- On Monday, the Metropolitan Opera in New York debuts Kaija Saariaho's 'Innocence,' an opera exploring how a school shooting in Finland reverberates through survivors' lives and their community.
- First performed at the Aix-en-Provence music festival in 2021, the 110-minute piece has traveled globally but takes on particular resonance in America, where CNN reports at least eight school shootings occurred this year.
- The plot shifts between a wedding in Helsinki and the aftermath of a shooting a decade earlier, following 13 characters forever changed as the shooter's relatives face deep stigma and survivors struggle with trauma.
- Mezzo-Soprano Joyce DiDonato plays Tereza, a victim's mother, while Finnish American tenor Miles Mykkanen portrays the groom Tuomas, both navigating themes of grief and the "obscene glut of violence" in society.
- This marks the work's second American run following San Francisco Opera performances in June 2024, with DiDonato expressing hope the story can "prompt a rethink of gun violence in America and other issues.
48 Articles
48 Articles
Photo Jean-Louis Fernandez Innocence by Kaija Saariaho, created at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2021 in the direction of Simon Stone, explores how a devastating attack in a high school in Finland continues to resonate in the lives of those who survived it. The opera is on display this week of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in a country where school shootings have almost become a tragic banality. For the famous American mezzo-soprano Joyc…
Joyce DiDonato and Vilma Jää during a rehearsal of Innocence at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (Symbolic image) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images) Getty Images. The opera "Innocence" by composer Kaija Saariaho will make its debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Monday. The work explores a shooting at a Finnish school and its devastating impact on the survivors and the shooter's family. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato sings …
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