Saariaho's La Passion de Simone

It's a comment both on current availability and prevailing mentality that I choose to write a piece about a television experience, albeit via the internet. There are not many concerts around during this year of lock down.

The broadcast in question was courtesy of Operavision and, given rules on social mixing around Europe at the time of the recording - last October - it is no surprise it came from Sweden. It was a performance of the oratorio La Passion de Simone, based on the writings of Simone Weil composed by Kaija Saariaho on text by Amin Maalouf. This is a piece for orchestra, chorus and soprano that its composer describes both as an oratorio and an opera. The latter is stretching concepts, because there is only one character and no action. There are also electronics, which extend further than the taped quotations from Simone Weil's work that mark the movements, to include at various points augmentation to the orchestral sounds in order to change textures, add depth or surprise.

The structure is fifteen movements, each representing one station of the cross, the whole representing a passion play. The underpinning idea is that the life and work of mystic, political thinker and philosopher, Simone, Weil, was like that of a modern Christ, who gave her life to identify the shortcoming in the rest of humanity. This does not seem to come across in the music, perhaps because, in updating the idea, Saariaho and Maalouf have completely transformed the image into something both contemporary and unfamiliar.

Simone Weil was academically successful, a classmate of Simone de Beauvoir, and one time Marxist. She was born into a middle-class professional Jewish family and excelled from the start, but not in the realm of health. And her eyesight was none too good…

She took a job in a factory at one stage to fully understand what it was to be a worker. She took up arm on behalf of the anarchists in Spain, before her comrades took the rifle away from her on account of her eyesight’s inability to aim it. She had always had a “spiritual” streak, it seems, and later on went on to formulate a pantheistic version of Christianity, apparently rejecting her Judaism. She eventually, aged 34, finished up in hospital in Britain with tuberculosis. And died. The judgment was that she had in fact starved herself to death. The basis of Saariaho’s piece is that this was an act of personal sacrifice to atone for the sins of humanity.  The case is made.

Saariaho's music is all about timbre and texture. It tends to sound one paced, though it rarely is. It deceptively seems to offer a wall of experience but close up that expanse of sound comprises many miniscule shards. The chorus acts like a commentator, not quite like an evangelist as in Bach, but always playing a secondary role compared to the presence of the soprano soloist. The principal character is not only the voice of Simone Weil, but also a commentary on her writing, an interpreter, sometimes even a third person critic, probably the voice of the author. And Sophie van Otter's performance is so good it is impossible to describe. One aspect of the text which I do not understand is the repeated references to Simone as if the narrator is a younger sister. Simone had no younger sister, so this is perhaps the personification of the rest of humanity who have adopted her as a sibling in gratitude to her gesture of solidarity.

But overall, as so often with Saariaho, we are left with a sense of something having passed us by, greeted us perhaps, held our attention for its duration, but without ever really revealing itself to us. It may be an enigmatic style, but it may also be something deeply personal, as the composer revealed in the barely comfortable interview that followed. It may be shyness, a desire to remain apart, removed from direct contact. It was also revealing to hear the composer say that this was only the work’s second production in 14 years.