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The Metropolitan Opera: 'L'Amour de loin'

L'Amour de loin (Love from Afar) is an opera in five acts with music by Kaija Saariaho and libretto by Amin Maalouf. In 2019 L’Amour de loin was ranked the 6th greatest classical music work of the 21st century.

The opera was inspired by the historical figure of the 12th-century troubadour, Jaufré Rudel. The first performances took place in Salzburg and Paris in 2000, but I would like to briefly comment the version made by the Metropolitan Opera in New York I had the opportunity to watch.
Let's start with the fact that the art of 5 acts is quite extensive, and its not very dynamic beginning can be a bit tedious. The plot is quite typical for classical literature and may resemble a mirror image of Lord Byron's romance, The Giaour. Both works are connected by the motif of orientalism, pilgrimage, unhappy love which ended in the death of one of the lovers, remorse and eventually entering a convent. Unlike 'Giaura', the French hero eventually dies from the protagonist who fell ill on a long trip to Tripoli to his beloved Clémence who considers herself responsible for the tragedy. Consequently, she joins the monastery for ‘love from afar’, which, as we guess, is probably not God's love, but the one of Jaufré. Of course, the poetic tale of unrequited love doesn’t exhaust the capacity of the opera. Quoting Philip Huscher: ‘L’Amour de loin turns anxiously around deeper themes – obsession and devotion, reality and illusion, the loneliness of the artist, the need to belong’ (The Land Where I Was Born)


In my opinion, the story told in the opera fits into the classic canon of romantic narratives, while the performance of the Metropolitan Opera attracts because of its clever use of simple forms and the play of lights and colors. I think that choreography and accompaniment are the great assets of this opera.


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