Saariaho: Adriana Mater. Fleur Barron, mezzo-soprano, Axelle Fanyo, soprano, Nicholas Phan, tenor, Christopher Purves, bass-baritone (Tsargo). San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor). Deutsche Grammophon 4866678. Total time: 126:00.
DIGITAL REVIEW — From outward appearance, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) had a hugely successful creative life, a stable marriage with children, and the best of collaborators. Yet behind her penetrating gaze that seemed to perceive worlds that others did not, she had a real-world hurt with the response to her second opera, Adriana Mater. An earnest piece that places social justice before dramatic action, the opera received a respectable number of productions in high-level places (the premiere was at the Paris Opera), but it received mixed reviews and didn’t claim the instant audience of her previous works. I never realized her depth of disappointment until I heard it directly from her — with a devastated chill in her voice.
At last, the 2006 opera has been commercially recorded — this DG two-disc set having been made within days of her 2023 death at age 70. With a well-chosen cast and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen, the recording promises a rehabilitation or, failing that, an objective explanation of what went right and what went wrong.
In contrast to the dreamy, lyrical L’Amour de loin about a love-stricken troubadour and a far-away countess, Adriana Mater juxtaposes Saariaho’s beyond-Debussy orchestral textures with brutal realism suggested by the mid-1990s Bosnian War. It may be her most daring stage work and contains some of her best music. But that doesn’t mean it works.
Though Amin Maalouf’s L’Amour de loin libretto had a parable-like elegance that implies profundity, the similar qualities he brings to Adriana Mater’s story of rape and retribution in an unnamed civil war (taken partly from the librettist’s past as a war correspondent) works less well. Character trajectories seem too straightforward as Adriana’s 17-year-old child of rape sets out to find his once-cruel, war-lord father but encounters a blind man too feeble to kill. The admirable moral (in Adriana’s words): “That man deserved to die but you, my son, did not deserve to become a killer.”
Musically, the ingredients are familiar — ghostly wordless choruses in the background, ear-flogging orchestral rhythms as well as tiny dissonances in the string harmonies — all creating an aggressive sonic backdrop with unseen forces amplifying the stage tension. In fact, the opera begins in such a state of crisis that you barely get to know or like any of the characters, which are like pawns on the chess board of wartime history. The actual rape has horrific thrusting brass amid a fortissimo wordless chorus. Anything but a plot device, the rape steps out from opera and into reality — a counterpart to the rat-cage torture chamber in George Orwell’s 1984.
What keeps one listening? Though her textures are often entrancing and sophisticated, simple gestures make Saariaho’s music eloquent, whether the ascending vocal line that transcends the momentary drama at hand or the downward dip of a solo instrument that gives the music gravity. That gravity, however, isn’t sustained. The music’s inspiration doesn’t flag so much as it fails to create proper valleys in contrast to the dramatic peaks. The quiet ending is also problematic. Though a typical operatic resolution isn’t possible here, Saariaho didn’t deliver a convincing alternative.
At least as heard on this recording, which is taken from live performances, the result is reasonably convincing on every level but likely to be superseded in the future. The San Francisco Symphony shows occasional signs of strain over the long haul. The cast is absolutely first-class — soprano Fleur Barron as Adriana, Axelle Fanyo as Adriana’s sister Refka, Nicholas Phan as Adriana’s son Yonas, and Christopher Purves as the rapist Tsargo. But other than the nastiness projected by Purves’ snarling performance, the singers seem too busy negotiating the vocal lines and projecting the most basic meaning to go much beyond the surfaces of their characters. So the opera continues to occupy a place of respect in this great composer’s output but still awaits the next and better chapter in its performance life.
