Émilie is arguably Kaija Saariaho’s most beautiful opera

Karita Mattila shines but dramaturgy limps along at Lyon première

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By Vesa Sirén in Lyon
     
      It is just possible that Kaija Saariaho has composed her most beautiful opera to date.
      The competition is naturally tough, but Saariaho’s new opera Émilie, which opened at the Opéra National de Lyon on Monday last week, features even a shade more colourful music with greater expressive power than did her first opera L’amour de loin.
      As an overall operatic experience, the première of Émilie nevertheless did not match up to the level of L’amour de loin, something that was by no means attributable to the composer nor to Karita Mattila, whose performance in the demanding title-role deserved nothing but praise.
      Amin Maalouf’s libretto is thought-provoking, but in terms of dramaturgy it is problematic compared with the masterful text he wrote for L’amour de loin.
     
Film and opera director François Girard’s direction works, but even he is unable to end the libretto in a gratifying manner.
      The unique opera monologue calls for enormous stamina, and Mattila put heart and soul into it.
      She was on stage all 80 minutes, singing sometimes on her back and sometimes sitting at her desk and writing.
      Certainly she was given support by a composer who knows Mattila’s unique and powerful instrument inside out.
     
However, Saariaho did not make it easy for her soloist.
      The beautiful music is basically very complex. And it contains an enormous amount of singing to be got through.
      Mattila sang reasonably purely, while her timbre was amazingly flexible and dramatically apt.
      Mattila never lacks presence and charisma.
      In a controlled frenzy, she took on and owned the role of Émilie du Châtelet, a female scholar who lived in France during the Age of Enlightenment.
     
Émilie was a physicist and a mathematician, the passionate lover of the philosopher Voltaire, a gambler, a passable player on the harpsichord, a singer, and much much more.
      After bearing three children for her husband, Émilie du Chatelet considered she had satisfactorily fulfilled her marital obligations, thereafter changing her lovers regularly and seeking excitement from gambling. Apparently the open-marriage arrangement was a fairly amicable one.
      In any event, Émilie’s last affair proved to be fatal.
      In her early 40s, she fell in love with poet Jean François de Saint-Lambert and became pregnant by him.
      In a letter to a friend she confided her fears that, because of her age, she would not survive her pregnancy.
      The opera depicts "her last night" when she is frenziedly finishing her major life's work, the translation into French, with commentaries, of Isaac Newton’s Principia Matematica.
      At the same time, she is going through her own life and the men in it.
     
In real life, Émilie died almost one week after the childbirth.
      Is this why the opera has a somewhat problematic end, dramaturgically speaking?
      The contradictions between her roles as a scholar and a mother lead towards a dramaturgical climax, but at the end of the opera, Émilie just remains at her writing desk, until in the last seconds she is "enlightened" both metaphorically and concretely.
     
This non-dramatic ending might have been the reason for the fact that the audience remained obstinately seated at the final curtain, even though people kept clapping and shouting their ”bravos”.
      ”Composing the end was a difficult task”, Saariaho admitted after the show.
      ”But [librettist] Amin Maalouf would have written a new dénouement if I had asked”, Saariaho added.
      The enlightenment at the end was a solution decided upon by the two Finnish ladies. Director François Girard says that he tried some other solutions first.
      ”At the end, Émlie merges into the stars and is transformed from material into spiritual. It is very beautiful, the best ending so far”, Girard explains.
     
The staging of the opera emphasizes Émilie’s role as a scholar.
      The setting is like a planetarium in which the planets are named after men in her life, from her father and her husband to lover Voltaire.
      With the planets slowly circling Émilie, she looks at one planet after another.
      Every change of eye contact means a new phase in the libretto.
      This makes the monologue a bit more concrete. Even so, one cannot help thinking what director François Girard, the auteur behind Le violon rouge (1998) and Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993) could have accomplished if he had been able to get more use out of his strongest suit, namely his experience as a film director.
     
During the applause, Girard and Mattila shook hands in an exceptionally formal manner.
      However, the director vehemently denies the persistent rumours of backstage conflicts.
      ”It was my duty to help the brilliant Karita Mattila, who had so much to learn and absorb. And what a performance she gave us!” Girard enthuses.
     
In terms of style, Émilie is guaranteed Saariaho quality, and yet it brings many new aspects to her image as a composer.
      It was a flash of genius to complement the chamber orchestra with a harpsichord, which Émilie was also able to play well.
      The sound of the harpsichord was electronically amplified and conveyed to loudspeakers, which gave the surreal impression that the instrument was wandering in space.
      The harpsichord increases the shimmer and shine of Saariaho’s orchestration.
      The harpsichord also makes fast ticking sounds similar to the rapid heartbeats of a foetus.
      A pregnant woman carries in her body two hearts. This subjective insight has inspired Saariaho’s concept of rhythm in her earlier work for orchestra Du Cristal and her opera Adriana Mater, and now in Émilie.
     
In some places, Karita Mattila’s voice was treated electronically so that it could be heard simultaneously as her own and as the voice of a man or men.
      This happens when Émilie recalls what Voltaire and other men had said about her.
      ”This has long been my dream, but it has not been technologically possible until now”, Saariaho explained.
      According to the score of the opera, Mattila’s voice is ”normally” amplified only in the quiet spoken passages.
      Even the sound of a quill pen was strengthened, and it contributed to the colour of the music in the writing episodes.
     
When it comes to Saariaho’s earlier works, L’amour de loin could be best compared to the new opera.
      There is no lack of dramatics in the music of Émilie. The fear of birth and anxiety are reflected in the orchestra’s low register, even though the topmost character is beauty.
      Saariaho knows how to write quick-fire textures, as demonstrated by her cello concerto Notes on Light and one of her other key compositions Quatre instants.
      However, Émilie has not tempted her in the direction of a similar buzzing bustle, and maybe the theme did not even suggest that.
     
The opera portrays a woman who was guided by strong emotions and a razor-sharp mind.
      The two sides balanced each other, and this balance could be heard in Saariaho’s music and seen in Mattila’s stage performance.
     
     
Kaija Saariaho’s monologue opera Émilie at the Opéra National de Lyon. Director François Girard, stage design by François Séguin, costumes by Thibaut Vancraenenbroeck. The Lyon National Opera Orchestra, conducted by Kazushi Ono. Karita Mattila sings the lead role.
     
     
     
BACKGROUND: Kaija Saariaho’s earlier operas
     
     
Saariaho’s first opera was L’amour de loin, composed to a French libretto by Amin Maalouf with staging by Peter Sellars.
      It premiered at the 2000 Salzburg Festival. The work is one of the most popular operas from the 21st century. L’amour de loin was produced in Helsinki in 2004.
     
Saariaho’s second opera Adriana Mater was jointly commissioned by the Opéra National de Paris and the Finnish National Opera.
      The libretto was written in French by Saariaho’s frequent collaborator Amin Maalouf.
      The opera received its world première at the Opéra Bastille in April 2006 in a production directed by Peter Sellars. Adriana Mater was produced in Helsinki in 2008.
     
Originally, La Passion de Simone was an oratorio for a solo soprano, a choir, an orchestra, and electronics.
      La passion de Simone was specifically the result of Saariaho’s collaboration with Amin Maalouf and Peter Sellars. The work centres on the life and writings of Simone Weil.
      It had its world première in November 2006 in Vienna. The Finnish première of La Passion de Simone took place in the opening concert of Helsinki Festival in August 2008.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.3.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Kaija Saariaho´s Émilie receives mixed reviews (4.3.2010)
  Karita Mattila shines in première of Saariaho´s monologue opera Émilie (2.3.2010)
  Émilie is the work of two strong-willed women (2.3.2010)

Links:
  Kaija Saariaho (Wikipedia)
  Émilie du Châtelet (Wikipedia)
  Opéra National de Lyon

VESA SIRÉN / Helsingin Sanomat
vesa.siren@hs.fi