Paris Opera names a room for Kaija Saariaho

Paris Opera names a room for Kaija Saariaho

Opera

norman lebrecht

February 07, 2024

There is a salon at the Bastille Opera that will be forever Finland.

Yesterday Opera chief Alexander Neef named the room for the late composer Kaija Saariaho in recognition, he said, of her ‘special relationship with Paris where she settled from 1982.

Her second opera, Adriana Mater, was commissioned for the Bastille.

Saariaho died in June last year, aged 70.

Comments

    • GuestX says:

      A beautiful building, and a wonderful opera.

    • professional musician says:

      She was a genius. I don´t even dare to imagine how a building harmonizing with your work would look. More like an empty parking lot.

      • John Borstlap says:

        A comment from anybody but a professional musician. Because such building would look something like this:

        https://kohlmann.co/tonhalle-orchester-zurich-at-tonhalle-maag/

        The problem of modernity’s aesthetics is that so many people think that ‘modernism’ = ‘modern’. But the movement, which stems from the early years of the last century, so: already 100 years old, feeds on the juvenile romanticism of underdeveloped perception, which dehumanizes the world. That is not so difficult to see and to hear. And composers who fall into that trap, simply imitate its morbitities.

        The fundamental idea of modernism was to create a world where human life is efficient, slick, materialistic, industrial – so, basically a life without Nature and without human nature.

        • professional musician says:

          Blah blah….

        • professional musician says:

          I am a professional performing musician….You ,obviously an amateur composer

          • John Borstlap says:

            Sound from under the rock…

            Norman, you should put a lid on such utterances, to avoid having SD be filthied.

          • professional musician says:

            It already is, thanks to your comments….Poor thing.Dishing it out, but can´t take it…

          • John Borstlap says:

            ?? Someone being very, very frustrated……

          • professional musician says:

            Not at all…. I have a wonderful life as a professional musician for 45 years in fabulous orchestras .And as a listener too. You overestimate your importance. So, what about your upcoming performances? I couldn´t find any thing but tons of SD comments googling news about you,, .So far, in two of the top Dutch orchestras i have longtime friends and former colleagues playing,no one i spoke to has ever heard of you. So much about frustration…

          • John Borstlap says:

            I suffered greatly having to trail along to these premieres in Dallas, Hong Kong, and earlier in Montpellier, Manchester, Moldava (of al places), and having to gather all those jubilant press reactions, putting them on the website, answering all those calls and emails, in short: so much work! And I don’t mentioned the books he published which provoke all these angry reactions…. So glad he’s ignored in Holland, that would only add to my miserable plight.

            Sally

          • professional musician says:

            Thank you for letting us know….From the press and internet coverage we would never guess….

    • Ellen says:

      John —

      I agree.

      Saariaho seems to fill the “modern but not as bad as Milton Babbitt” niche.

      My brother in law calls it the plink-plonk school.

      🙂

      • professional musician says:

        It´s music for grown ups, as my mom used to say.

        • John Borstlap says:

          I love this stuff… finally a professional musician with real taste!

          Yes! That silly music that is turned-out night after night with their B’s, and everything around it, boring boring boring and for children! I wonder why grown-ups and especially old people return to it, as if they are clinging to their youth long past.

          Only when I listen again & again & again to the real stuff I feel I’m an adult. Forget the Bachs, Beethovens, Brahms, Bagners, Bahlers, etc. etc. and reconnect with your adult truly modern soul! I strongly advise to begin with Pli selon Pli and then especially the first Pli. There’s only one real adult B and his birth place is IRCAM.

          Sally

          • professional musician says:

            What an immature and narrow minded comment….Music is not about either or…..From my earliest childhood days i soaked up music of all sorts without prejudice. I listened to everything, to me it didn´t matter if it was Corelli, Copland,or Ornette Colman. The barriers of tonality, atonality, or whatever classification invented just to make things easier to pidgeonhole for people liking things simple, Of course no one being a musically educated mind would question the worth of esteemed masters as the three B´s.
            But i enjoy Mrs. Saariaho´s lush , gourgeously orchestrated magic world as much as Boulez´s austere modernism, Ades´mind boggling inventiveness as much as , Perotin,Sibelius, or Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner( to name just a few of hundreds of composers i adore).
            Has it ever entered your mind that your penchant for throwing mud at your more talented, interesting and succesful colleagues prevents your works from being performed more often and,people actually ,listening to it? Intolerance closes the door to any serious musical institution almost instantly.
            I liked parts of your violin concerto. I don´t think it´s remotely on the level of Saariaho, Lindberg, Ades, Grime, Knussen, or Widmann.
            But i enjoyed it certainly more than most of Philip Glass. And yes, i can listen to both, Boulez and Borstlap

  • Ive read several just right stuff here Certainly price bookmarking for revisiting I wonder how a lot effort you place to create this kind of great informative website

  • Andreas C. says:

    It’s very appropriate, considering that she has been the most important, and perhaps the only important, composer of opera in the French language in the 21st century.

  • MOST READ TODAY: