Love from Afar

In L’Amour de loin, the first opera by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, the music travels back and forth between East and West, between Aquitaine in France and the Libyan capital Tripoli. In her first collaboration with the Finnish-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, Saariaho’s starting point is the fictional biography of the troubadour Jaufré Rudel who, in the 12th century, sang of ‘amor de lonh’ or ‘pure love from afar’ in his songs. The opera gives musical expression, at times very dramatically and then again hypnotically, to the fascination with the Great Unknown and the sense of separation between two continents. Saariaho’s sophisticated score links up perfectly with Maalouf’s poetic idiom and combines echoes of the troubadour with a richly detailed and evocative orchestration.
Jaufré, Prince of Blaye, has had enough of the superficial pleasures of love that his contemporaries pursue. Through his verses he cultivates an ideal and higher love which will probably never be fulfilled. It remains an illusion until a pilgrim who has recently returned from the Christian kingdom of Outremer assures him that his ideal woman truly exists. She is Clémence, the Countess of Tripoli, who went to the East when she was just a child. Jaufré becomes obsessed with her. His dream world is disrupted by an intense desire to see this woman. Despite the risk that he will lose his great love forever, he sets out on his journey. On arrival he dies in her arms – in an echo of the story of Tristan and Isolde.