Saariaho's final opera, Innocence, premiered in London in April of this year

Like any good new opera production, Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence prompted a post-performance debrief almost as long as the opera itself, as my friends and I tried to make sense of what we’d just seen on the Royal Opera House stage. Did the plot have enough dramatic gear-changes? How did conductor Susanna Mälkki manage to sustain that musical argument so consistently for so long? And how on earth do you bring any light to the rehearsal process when preparing an opera with such a bleak plot?

As the conversation wore on, there was one thing we could all agree on: that Vilma Jää’s performance as Markéta, the dead daughter of the central character whose presence haunts the piece, was utterly extraordinary. Jää was a student in the folk music department of Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy when she got a call asking if she’d be interested in being involved with Saariaho’s next opera, a psychological thriller based on a modern-day school shooting. Jää and Saariaho created the role together over time, with Saariaho threading the particular timbres of cow-herding songs she associated with her childhood into the luminescent textures that represented her contemporary voice. And in the crystalline sounds of Markéta, Saariaho created that rare thing on the opera stage: an otherworldly sound that isn’t treated exotically, and which is given space to develop of its own accord. Close artistic collaborations—with Mälkki, Dawn Upshaw, or Karita Mattila—had the power to unlock something particularly special in Saariaho’s work; here was no different.

Moving tributes from Saariaho’s collaborators appeared online following the announcement of the composer’s death last week, aged 70. ‘Everything I’ve accomplished in my career is because of Kaija,’ Jää began. ‘I grew to be the artist I am today because she gave me a reason to do the work.’ Writing in the New York Times, Mälkki spoke of both Saariaho’s essential nuance, and her uncategorizable impact: ‘Her legacy is monumentally important, luminous and larger than we can fully comprehend at this time.’

The immediate, headline-grabbing part of Saariaho’s legacy is something she would have no doubt hated. When L’Amour de loin was staged at the Metropolitan Opera in 2016, Saariaho became only the second woman to have an opera produced there, after Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers appeared in 1903; when Innocence travels there in the 2025-26 season, Saariaho will be the first woman to have two different operas staged in that house. Speaking about the landmark moment with VAN Magazine in 2016, Saariaho was less than impressed: ‘It’s shocking that it still needs to be discussed, and therefore boring.’ But it’s a shocking, boring, but ultimately necessary conversation to have, and one which is slowly bearing fruit. The Met’s newfound emphasis on contemporary programming (announced in April, and of which Saariaho’s music is a part) represents another moment that history inches forwards. ‘We are advancing little by little,’ Saariaho noted hopefully; regardless of her thoughts on the conversation, there’s no doubt that her music has played some part in enacting change.

Advancing little by little is a useful metaphor for Saariaho’s art, a prismatic collection of constantly transforming soundcolours. Her musical journey was moved carefully around obstacles: a young mind full of sounds living with a family without much cultural grounding; early opposition to her pursuit composition from members of the Sibelius Academy on gender grounds; and travelling to Freiburg to study with Brian Ferneyhough, but finding the strict serialism of that world lacking in expressive potential. At the Darmstadt summer course of 1980, she encountered the French spectralism of Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail. Paris, the electronic research institute IRCAM, and a new chapter in her life beckoned.

Saariaho’s work after the move (and the subsequent aesthetic shift it caused) is where her most profound legacy lies. Pieces like Verblendungen or Du Cristal are remarkable in their capacity in their self-rejuvenation when both appear to be concluding. There are darting, virtuosic pieces like Graal théâtre for violinist Gidon Kremer, and a legion of compositions where electronics are woven into bigger patchworks. In her operas, Saariaho drew from essential themes – L’Amour on love, declared only in the moment of death—and slightly more acute considerations – Adriana Mater and civil war, Innocence and gun violence – often through the lens of family relationships. Even without the numerous accolades they picked up, there’s a cultural weight to these operas. ‘You don’t finish with these works,’ director Peter Sellars told the New York Times; 'they continue to be relevant through their sheer being'.

If there is a throughline in Saariaho’s work, it’s the presence and consideration of light. In his book The Northern Silence, Andrew Mellor reflects on light in Nordic countries robbed of daytime light, where seasons embody such different changes. ‘The changes in sunlight throughout the year in Finland are so drastic they affect everyone; you can’t escape its influence,' Saariaho said in 2014. It directly informs some pieces (the cello concerto Notes on Light, for example), and provides unanswerable questions in others. In Innocence, how can a piece so dark shimmer so brightly? Saariaho’s music has an inextinguishable glow that provides essential light for even the gloomiest moments.

Kaija Saariaho 1952 - 2023