The Metropolitan Opera presents “L’Amour de Loin”
An encore performance of Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin will be shown at Carmike's East Ridge 18 theaters on Wednesday, Dec. 21 at 6:30 p.m.
One of the most highly praised operas of recent years, which had its premiere at the Salzburg Festival in 2000, Kaija Saariaho’s yearning medieval romance L’Amour de Loin (“Love From Afar”), has its Met premiere this season.
The opera won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Musical Composition in 2003 and has been performed in Paris, London, Santa Fe, Helsinki, Aspen, Darmstadt, and elsewhere. Yet it took years before Kaija Saariaho became convinced that opera could be a viable medium for what she wanted to express as a composer.
She finally found the inspiration she was searching for in the short, quasi-legendary life story of an early medieval troubadour, Jaufré Rudel, and his improbable love for a far-away woman: “I felt that this was a story for me: simple, but full of meaning, and with a lot of space for music.”
L’Amour de Loin explores the archetypal themes of love and death that have been opera’s lifeblood from the very beginning. But Saariaho, who was born in Helsinki in 1952, brings a unique sensibility to this material through her enchanting musical language. “When I started to write this piece, I had to draw on all the musical resources I had used up till then, and all my experience,” she recalls. “I felt that I needed to stretch my music in different directions.”
L’Amour de Loin (“Love from Afar”)
Wednesday, December 21, 6:30 p.m.
Carmike East Ridge 18
5080 South Terrace
(423) 855-9652
www.carmike.com