Adelaide Festival. Elder Hall. 28 Feb 2025
By any measure, Innocence is a remarkable and enthralling piece of theatre. At the very start it grabs your attention – demands your attention – with the moody and foreboding overture that demonstrates a composer at the very heights of her compositional powers. It demands your attention when the curtain rises to reveal one of the most imposing sets you will experience on any stage. It sustains your attention as the set starts to slowly rotate, with only moments of pause throughout the next one-hundred-and-five non-stop minutes. It amplifies your attention as you bear witness and listen to one of the most harrowing stories unfold.
Hyperbole? Not at all. If anything, the above understates the impact Innocence has on the audience. Many Adelaide Festivals have a grand opera touted as their centrepiece, but this one blows them all away. The claim is real. Innocence is legacy of former festival Artistic Directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy, and it is difficult to see how current Artistic Director Brett Sheehey AO can better this.
Innocence is presented by the Adelaide Festival in association with State Opera South Australia, and is a co-commission and co-production of Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, San Francisco Opera, Dutch National Opera Amsterdam, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Finnish National Opera, Ballet Helsinki, and in partnership with the Metropolitan Opera New York. With such impressive resources behind it, one is entitled to expect nothing less than artistic excellence of the highest order, and one’s expectations are met by the bucket load!
Innocence, with music by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and libretto by Sofi Oksanen and Aleksi Barrière, explores themes of trauma, memory, and reconciliation. Set in a contemporary world, it centres around the aftermath of a shooting at an international school that occurred years earlier. The opera follows a group of people – students, teachers, and parents – who gather to reflect on the events and confront the haunting memories of that tragic day.
At its core, Innocence delves into how the past, particularly moments of violence, shapes the lives of individuals and communities. The narrative structure weaves together the perspectives of the characters, uncovering their inner conflicts, guilt, and the difficulty of moving forward. The shooting, which initially seems like a singular catastrophic event, is revealed to have far-reaching and complex emotional repercussions for all involved.
With its experimental score, the opera uses sound, atmosphere, and minimalism to create a deeply immersive experience. The music and vocal lines are often dissonant and frequently include uncomfortable intervals – it frequently evokes thoughts of Alban Berg’s music. The characters are caught in a web of fragmented memories and shifting identities, questioning the very notion of innocence in the face of overwhelming tragedy. Every character in the opera is touched in some way by the horrors of the shooting and feels guilt: the survivors because they survived; those indirectly impacted because they wonder why those more directly affected can’t put it all behind them. Human emotions are multifaceted and run deep.
Every character in Innocence is complex, and every member of the cast reaches deep inside their artistic being to bring Innocence to life, and they succeed admirably. No-one really stands out – it is a true ensemble piece. The singing is uniformly excellent, but the parochial audience especially enjoyed the commanding and warming tones of Teddy Tahu Rhodes. The text is sung in multiple languages, including English – a nod to the setting of the International School – and the surtitles are absolutely essential, but they are well designed and only a glance is needed to understand what is transpiring on stage.
Ultimately, Innocence is not just about remembering a violent act but also about the possibility of healing and the fragile nature of collective memory.
In interview, director Simon Stone describes Innocence as an “extraordinarily therapeutic opera about the need for honesty in the process of grief, and honesty in the process of recovering from a trauma” and as an “incredibly beautiful exploration of the scars we carry with us and the need to sometimes reopen wounds to make sure we can heal them properly the second time round.”
Stone is correct, and his vision for the opera comes through clearly, infusing everything with meaning and purpose. No member of the audience leaves the performance without being impacted and without questioning their own understanding of what it is to experience loss and subsequently grieve in a way that is visceral, inimitable, authentic and that provides an assured platform upon which to re-establish one’s sense of purpose and being.
The set has to be seen to be believed. It comprises a large two-story structure set on a revolve. Each of the two levels comprise a series of interconnected rooms that variously become a reception venue for a wedding including an impressive commercial kitchen, a café, classrooms in an international school, bathrooms, storage rooms, antechambers, balconies and the like. There is free movement between the levels via a staircase, and each room is independently and tastefully lit to make it easier to quickly see who is singing and where. The colours evoke mood at all times. When a room revolves out of sight and reappears some minutes later it has been transformed into something else. It is all done effortlessly and, crucially, unnoticed – the large backstage crew do a remarkable job, and fully deserve being brought onto stage and singled out as part of the final curtain call. The stage managers are to be commended.
French conductor Clément Mao-Takacs is more than a musician and expert conductor. He is clearly a creature of the theatre and understands the need for music and the elements of stage to work hand in glove. Like Escher’s hands, one produces the other – they are co-dependent. Mao-Takacs ensures the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is empathetic to everything that happens on stage. The music never dominates at the expense of the acting or singing, and individual instruments are allowed to feature just to the right degree. Frequently dissonance sounded consonant!
Christie Anderson, as chorus master of the combined Adelaide Chamber Singers and State Opera South Australia Chorus, again weaves her magic. The chorus is almost entirely out of sight but is heard as clear as a whistle. Impressive.
The text “I loved my brother. I love him still.” was sung by the bridegroom (Sean Panikkar), the brother of the mass murderer, in the purest and most heartfelt tones. Similarly, the single line “Let me go” was sung in the most disarming and sweet manner by the ghost of Markéta, one of the slain students to her grieving and inconsolable mother.
These two short sung texts are the most harmonic in the entire opera. They are brief beacons of love and hope, which is what Innocence is ultimately about.
Innocence is not to be missed. It is unique.
Kym Clayton
When: 28 Feb to 5 Mar
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
