Innocence (opera)

The opera, set in 21st century Helsinki, tells the intertwined stories of the wedding of Tuomas and Stela and a school shooting ten years earlier which killed ten students and one teacher. Before long, it is revealed that the shooter, who has recently been released, was Tuomas's brother. The groom's family has withheld this information from Stela, however, wishing to distance themselves from the event. Tereza, a waitress who was called to work the wedding at the last minute, overhears a conversation about Tuomas's brother; she is the mother of one of the shooting victims, Markéta, who appears throughout the opera as a ghost.

The events of the wedding reception are interspersed with scenes from the school, narrated by the teacher. While all the characters at the wedding are cast as opera singers, the students are all "musical actors", separating them into what Saariaho and Oksanen refer to as "the realm of memories". The shooter is never represented onstage, however, with the opera instead focusing on the aftermath of the tragedy and its effect on the victims.

Throughout the opera, the involvement of the students and of Tuomas in the tragedy is explored. The students' memories reveal that Markéta and others constantly bullied the shooter. One student, Iris, who was a friend of the shooter, pushes back against the others' delusion that this bullying had nothing to do with the shooting; she blames them all for the tragedy.

Tereza eventually breaks her silence, lashing out at Tuomas's mother and demanding an explanation. The family is then forced to explain the tragedy to Stela, who, to their surprise, is prepared to forgive Tuomas. Tuomas, however, explains that he feels personally responsible for the tragedy and unable to escape his past, and so decides to leave Stela. He reveals that he, his brother, and Iris conspired together to plan the shooting, but at the decisive moment Tuomas and Iris got cold feet and the shooter carried out the plan alone, taking full responsibility. The opera concludes with Markéta singing to Tereza plaintively, comforting her and asking her to move on.^{[1][4][5][6][7]}

Each character sings in their native language (Finnish, Czech, French, Romanian, Swedish, German, Spanish, or Greek), with communication between characters occurring in English.^[1] The role of Markéta, specified merely as a "folk singer" in the score, includes Finnish cow-herding calls and improvised cadenzas.^[8][9] The role was created for and in collaboration with Vilma Jää [fi], a Finno-Ugric folk singer and researcher of herding songs who sang the role in many of the early productions.^{[3][10][11][12]}

The piece is scored for the following orchestra:^[1]