Émilie is the work of two strong-willed women

Mono-drama staged by Kaija Saariaho and Karita Mattila leaves for European tour; Finnish audiences will have to wait

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By Vesa Sirén in Lyon
     
      ”Something definitely needs to be done about the end”, says soprano Karita Mattila in plain Finnish after the last rehearsals of composer Kaija Saariaho’s new opera Émilie at the Opéra National de Lyon.
      Saariaho agrees, and the famous film and opera director Francois Girard decides to change his direction. His merits as the auteur behind Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993) and Le violon rouge (1998) do not count for much when the two strong-willed Finnish women forcefully present their views.
      Mattila withdraws to concentrate on the première and leaves the dress rehearsal to her understudy.
      "She has seventy-five minutes of singing ahead of her. Two rest-days before that is really a must", explains Saariaho.
     
The opera monologue opened on Monday night, ending a period stretching over early 10 years during which Saariaho and Mattila were planning the opera.
      ”It all began when I saw Karita in Fidelio in London. She was marvellous, strong and sensitive at the same time”, Saariaho notes.
      Saariaho was looking for a theme that would be at least as favourable for Mattila as Leonore in Fidelio.
      She found it when she read the biography of Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749).
      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.
      She died at 42 of complications following the birth of her fourth child. 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 fact, Émilie du Châtelet died six days after the birth, much as she had feared when confiding to a friend.
      The libretto was written by Amin Maalouf, a longtime librettist collaborator with Saariaho.
     
The première of Émilie was granted to Opéra National de Lyon, the Director General of which is Serge Dorny, a Saariaho fan of many years standing.
      While he was Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the London Philarmonic Orchestra, Dorny made Saariaho his orchestra's Composer-in-Focus.
     
”Lyon is a less stressful place than Paris for staging a performance. Here people at least think twice about when they go on strike”, Saariaho says, referring to the travails surrounding her earlier opera Adriana Mater, the 2006 world première of which was delayed at the last moment because the personnel at L'Opéra de la Bastille in the French capital downed tools and started industrial action.
      However, peace in the workplace is a relative concept, even in Lyon. Saariaho admits frankly that she and director Girard have different views regarding the opera.
      ”For the director it is important to emphasise at the beginning that Émilie is a female scientist. As a composer, I am also very much inspired by Émilie’s science, but I would like to show the entire picture. However, I encourage the director to bring forth his own vision”, Saariaho relates.
     
Another element providing a frisson of excitement to the opera is Karita Mattila’s own feisty temperament.
      ”It is true that a new opera is not born without any dramatics”, Saariaho shrugs enigmatically.
      Ah. At whom has Mattila been snapping, then?
      ”At everyone in turn, as she demands so much of herself. It is normal to demand the same of others and to come out and say it candidly”, Saariaho notes.
      However, Mattila has not been taking pot-shots at Saariaho.
      ”We share the same view on Émilie and our cooperation is good. Karita has familiarised herself with the role with enormous intensity, while also reading a lot about the person of Émilie du Chatelet”, Saariaho enthuses.
     
In mid-March, the opera will leave Lyon for Amsterdam and the Dutch National Opera, and later on it will continue its European tour to London, Paris, and Lisbon, where Risto Nieminen - the Director of the music section at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and former Artistic Director of the Helsinki Festival - decided to participate in the joint commission.
     
The Finnish National Opera has also been repeatedly asked about their willingness to participate, says Saariaho.
      ”Serge wrote to them three times, and my publisher has been calling the Finnish Opera, but every time the answer has been that this does not belong to our department”, Saariaho reports.
      "What's going on there at the National Opera? I mean, the least they could do would be to answer, even if they were to decide eventually that they would not be coming along on the project."
      Saariaho has also heard that the sets for her earlier operas L'amour de loin and Adriana Mater, produced in Helsinki in 2004 and 2008 respectively, were slated for being destroyed by the National Opera.
      "I think they were eventually sold off elsewhere. As far as I know, the Santa Fe Opera [which has produced both works] took some of the material."
     
Kaija Saariaho has no shortage of performances of her work around the world.
      Does it really matter to her what the Finnish National Opera decides?
      ”I am a Finn, of course. Even Adriana Mater was performed to full audiences 11 times. I feel sorry for those people in Finland who are interested in my music and don't get to hear it”, Saariaho says with some regret.
     
”We have been contacted by Lyon, and I have discussed the matter with our Artistic Director Mikko Franck. At the moment, we have no plans to participate but I find it odd that we would not have given them any reply. I am in the habit of answering all enquiries”, responds Päivi Kärkkäinen, the General Director of the Finnish National Opera.
      Mikko Franck denies having received anything else from Lyon but an invitation to the première.
      ”I wonder whether the publisher has contacted the right firm? Surely our staff is able to connect phone calls to the direct place”, Frank argues when asked about the repeated calls allegedly made by Saariaho’s publisher.
     
Franck plans to see Saariaho’s new opera as soon as possible, even though he could not attend the première in Lyon, as he had to conduct a performance of Albert Herring in the Finnish National Opera at the same time.
      ”Our programmes have been planned until the summer of 2013. If we decide to include Émilie after that, we will have enough time to make a production of our own”, Franck contemplates.
     
On the subject of the sets for the two earlier works, Mikko Franck acknowledges that the decision to part with them means the operas will not be returning to the Helsinki stage any time soon, even though they were both big hits on their first appearance here.
      "New Finnish operas generate huge interest on theif first showing, and find an audience very easily. Reprise productions are not so well attended. The first time around, L'amour de loin sold out 100%, but the second set of performances played to 60% audiences. This is quite normal for Finnish operas", he points out.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.3.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Karita Mattila shines in première of Saariaho´s monologue opera Émilie (2.3.2010)

See also:
  Kaija Saariaho wins Sonning Prize (9.2.2010)
  Kaija Saariaho is the first woman to win the Wihuri Sibelius Prize (20.10.2009)

Links:
  Opéra National de Lyon (Wikipedia)
  Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
  Kaija Saariaho at the Finnish Music Information Centre
  Kaija Saariaho (Wikipedia)
  Karita Mattila bio on Universal Music
  Kaija Saariaho homepage
  Kaija Saariaho on Ondine Records

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