Innocence is a pensive modern opera focussed on the survivors, and fallout, of a school shooting

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Adelaide Festival audiences have been extremely lucky to see Finnish-French composer Kaija Saariaho’s powerful final opera Innocence set 10 years on from a school shooting. Four years after its world premiere in Aix en Provence in July 2021, Australian audiences got to see Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence for the first time at Adelaide Festival 2025.

Composer Kaija Saariaho’s ouverture to Innocence is ominous, filling the audience with dread that something bad is about to happen. During the overture, before anything is happening on stage, we get to watch Conductor Clément Mao-Takacs at work, and it’s wonderful. He’s very animated, directing the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and chorus with precision and passion.

Each of the survivors of the shooting reveal the emotional scars they’ve been left with. One can no longer be in places where his phone needs to be turned off, another cannot sit with their back to a door. Another has the guilt of hiding, and not saving anyone but herself. A teacher (Lucy Shelton) can no longer teach.

Sofi Oksanen wrote the original Finnish libretto together with Aleksi Barrière, who translated it into the various other languages we hear on stage: English, Czech, French, Romanian, Swedish, German, Spanish, and Greek. Having each character speak in their own language added to the authenticity of the international school the shooting happened at, but also showed that this could have happened anywhere in the world.

Set Designer Chloe Lamford created a modern set for Innocence, which allowed us to see into various rooms and have various scenes play out at once. A two story rotating cube houses both the school room in which the students find themselves 10 years on, but also the one in which they were on that fateful day. It also contains a very pared back intimate wedding and the adjoining kitchen.

Downstairs, a very small wedding reception is taking place. Tuomas (Sean Panikkar) is marrying his bride Stela (Faustine de Monès), who feels like she is gaining a family, something particularly special for her as an orphan from Bucharest. But she is completely unaware of who this family is. A waitress Tereza (Jenny Carlstedt) who is working the wedding wasn’t meant to be working that night but got called in because her colleague was sick. As the night progresses, she becomes angrier and physically ill at this family getting to continue on as if nothing had happened while her life stopped 10 years ago when her daughter, Markéta, died. We don’t know at this point what the connection between this family and her daughter’s death is, only that Tereza’s very presence threatens to ruin this happy wedding day.

Innocence Photo: Andrew Beveridge — Photo: Andrew Beveridge

Throughout Innocence‘s wedding scenes, the chorus eerily sings “Stela and Tuomas” over and over, almost like they’re chanting. Atmospheric isn’t adequate a word to describe Kaija Saariaho’s score. Tereza’s palpable trauma is additionally spoken via the ghost of her deceased Markéta (Erika Hammarberg) who stands in the room above speaking to her Mum saying you still go to the conservatory every day at 6, and how she still buys her favourite apples and throws one out each day as if her daughter had eaten it.

The whole of the cast is wonderful but Jenny Carlstedt and Erika Hammarberg’s performances are outstanding. Carlstedt’s very believable portrayal of a mother in mourning is not just in her voice but in her facial expressions and body language. Erika Hammarberg’s ghostly presence is both heartbreaking and beautiful. Student Iris (Victoria Coxhill) grabs our attention from the very first time she slowly shuffles across the stage, hunched over and reclusive. She speaks so slowly with the words drawn out that it’s off-putting. She commands our attention whenever she’s speaking. She makes our skin crawl.

Innocence - the ghost of Marketa Photo: Andrew Beveridge — Erika Hammarberg as the ghost of Marketa
Photo: Andrew Beveridge

Kaija Saarhijo’s modern score adds to the tension and emotion flawlessly. The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the State Opera South Australia Chorus are superb under the direction of Clément Mao-Takacs.

Innocence is a powerful modern opera, both in its score and in the subject it treats. It’s an international piece not just because of the multilingual librettos but also because sadly these days it could take place anywhere – and while it may be a school shooting here, the collective trauma and scars it has left could be left by many other life-altering violent events in todays’ world. If you get the chance to see it, we strongly recommend that you do.