The world premiere recording of Adriana Mater, Kaija Saariaho’s second opera has been released by Deutsche Grammophon. It is performed by San Francisco Symphony conducted by Saariaho’s lifelong friend Esa-Pekka Salonen
A generous collaborator, Saariaho worked on her first opera L'Amour de Loin and then Adriana Mater with librettist Amin Maalouf and director Peter Sellars, both of whom became close family friends. It's a beautiful tribute to those friendships that this recording captures a June 2023 performance of a staged production directed by Peter Sellars, delivered mere days after the composer’s passing; mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron sings the title role, in a cast that also includes Axelle Fanyo (Refka), Nicholas Phan (Yonas), and Christopher Purves (Tsargo). Adriana Mater will be released digitally on August 30, 2024. A physical edition will follow in 2025.
Both the premise of the opera and its musical material find inspiration in Saariaho’s and Maalouf’s respective life experiences: Saariaho’s motherhood, and Maalouf’s firsthand experience of the Lebanese Civil War. “As a starting point for our second collaboration, I told Amin Maalouf about the powerful experience I’d had when I was pregnant with my first child, the sensation of two hearts beating in my body,” Saariaho wrote in her composer’s note. “Amin contributed a subject that was also essential to him on a personal level: war and violence. As the idea of two hearts and their rhythmic polyphony was one of the first thoughts we had about the opera, it also naturally became a musically omnipresent element. The different rhythms and tempos of the characters were always present in my compositional work: I had sketched them out in advance and used them as matrices for the music.”
Salonen writes in the recording’s liner notes:
“I conducted the world premiere of Adriana Mater in April 2006 at the Opéra National de Paris ... Peter Sellars directed the production. The rehearsal period was challenging for several reasons. The General Director of the Paris Opéra, Gerard Mortier, was mostly busy putting out fires elsewhere, and we felt often as if we had been left to our own devices. We had to do a lot of work on the balance, as Kaija had orchestrated the score (uncharacteristically) quite heavily to fill the entire massive auditorium of the Opéra Bastille, and the singers had trouble cutting through. She rewrote practically the entire score in a few weeks. The material used in building the set caused headaches and allergic reactions to many of us, including me. The final straw was that the planned first performance was cancelled a few hours before the show due to a strike. Despite all that, I was happy to be working on this powerful piece with my two close friends Kaija and Peter.
I returned to this marvellous score eighteen years later in San Francisco as an older and much more experienced musician. We were in the middle of rehearsals with the San Francisco Symphony for the performance heard on this recording when the devastating news about Kaija’s passing reached us. To be able to share it with the world is a true consolation, and something I feel I owe to my friend who will always be one of the most important people in my life.”
