At Met Opera, life after a school shooting takes center stage

But on Monday, Kaija Saariaho's "Innocence" -- which explores how a devastating attack at an international school in Finland reverberates through the lives of its survivors and the community -- will debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

For celebrated US mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, taking on the piece at the current time was necessary.

"It was the subject matter and feeling the importance of telling the story and telling the story in America in 2026," DiDonato told AFP ahead of the premiere.

The 110-minute piece, first performed at the Aix-en-Provence music festival in 2021, has been performed around the world, but takes on particular resonance in a country where at least eight school shootings have occurred this year, according to CNN.

The action in "Innocence" shifts constantly between a well-heeled wedding ceremony in Helsinki, where the groom is revealed to be the brother of the man responsible for a shooting a decade earlier, and the fraught moments before and after the calamity.

DiDonato plays the waitress Tereza, the mother of a shooting victim who unexpectedly finds herself at the wedding, serving wine to family members she met after the tragedy but who don't recognize her. She eventually erupts in anger.

The opera's 13 characters are forever changed -- the shooter's relatives face stigma, while the survivors are told to move on despite the lingering effects of trauma.

The Kansas-born DiDonato said she is "horrified" by shootings but sees "Innocence" as also addressing a normalization of violence that extends into other areas such as deportations and war.

"It's important to participate in these things and shine a light on injustice, shine a light on inhumanity, shine a light on suffering," DiDonato said.

The opera "speaks to the obscene glut of violence that we're living through right now," she added.
Opening minds
The New York production of "Innocence" marks its second run at an American opera house after performances by the San Francisco Opera in June 2024.

Finnish American tenor Miles Mykkanen, who will play the groom Tuomas in New York as he did in San Francisco, said while audience members have hailed Saariaho's artistry, some see the piece -- performed without intermission -- as too grim to see more than once.

During a month of rehearsals before opening night, Mykkanen made exercising and walking through Central Park part of his ritual to escape from the opera's dark themes.

But he told AFP he still wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night "wide awake thinking about this piece."

"Opera singers, we often carry the heavy grief and drama and trauma in our own work," he said. "But I've never encountered a piece that has to carry so much violence."

DiDonato, one of the Met's biggest names following star turns in bel canto works, also won plaudits for her performance as Sister Helen Prejean in "Dead Man Walking," another modern opera with heavy subject matter -- the death penalty debate.

She spoke of one audience member, a relative of someone who was murdered, who became more open to a debate about the merits of capital punishment after seeing the opera.

That gave her hope that "Innocence" could prompt a rethink of gun violence in America and other issues.

"These kinds of stories can put cracks in the hearts of people in a good way," she said. "It can crack open people."