The opera, titled Émilie, opened Monday night at the Opera de Lyon in France.
Forty-nine-year-old powerhouse soprano Mattila plays the only role - the lover of the philosopher Voltaire. Émilie was an extraordinary woman in the 1700's. She had a passion for science, a forbidden pursuit for women. Pregnant with Voltaire’s child, she rightly predicted that she would die in childbirth.
"I believe Émilie was such an extraordinary person, that she probably did not have very many female friends. She had to dress up like a man when she went to scientific seminars," empathises Saariaho.
Operatic Monologue a Risk
Saariaho says that composing a mono-drama for an opera was musically a real challenge. It's also a big risk, as audiences are unused to this format. But both the composer and the Opera de Lyon’s Director General Serge Dorny say the opera works thanks to Mattila's star power.
"It needs an incredible performer to bring such a piece to life. But actually also it was a calculated risk, because we have such an incredible performer," says Dorny.
The opera was expressly written for Mattila.
The French-language libretto was written by French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, who also wrote the libretto for two of Saariaho's previous operas.
