A wedding celebration becomes a place of confrontation: Innocence is a deeply moving musical theater piece about guilt, trauma, and the long shadows cast by a crime—and about how memory, silence, and truth are inextricably linked.
Tereza has stepped in at short notice as a waitress for a small wedding reception. She is horrified to recognize the groom, Tuomas, and his parents as the family of the young man who went on a rampage at an international school ten years ago, killing her own daughter, Markéta.
The bride, Stela, knew nothing about the crime, not even the existence of a brother had been mentioned. But Tereza urges the family to break their silence, and so, layer by layer, the past comes to light. Interwoven with the plot of the wedding celebration are the stories of those who survived the assassination but whose lives are still marked by the traumatic experience to this day.
Composer Kaija Saariaho, Sofi Oksanen, and Aleksi Barrière, who wrote the libretto, have created a moving drama about guilt and trauma, helplessness, survival, and the question of how we can break the complex cycle of pain—from its onset to its transmission to its overcoming—and thus possibly (re)gain a state of "innocence." . Although Saariaho has given each character their own musical characteristics, her soulful composition connects all the characters without judging them and draws the audience into the story with its atmospheric sound language.
Premiere May 24,
Further performances: May 28 and 31, June 10, 12, and 14, 2026
