(Photo: Andreas Etter)

Having initially been rejected from studying composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki for essentially being female, the Finnish composer Katija Saariaho was certainly no stranger to the old prejudices that have severely restricted the lives of many millions of women over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that when she came to write an opera based on a female character, she chose a figure whose achievements, despite the ingrained discrimination and formidable barriers that she faced, stood equal with the best men of her age.

Her name was Emilie du Châtelet.

A Woman Unjustly Overlooked by History

Born in Paris in 1706 into the lower echelons of the French nobility, Emilie grew into a woman with a formidable intellect, a passion for learning, and the will to follow her own path in the world. Although she was fortunate to have a father who was prepared to invest in her education, her academic achievements, given the hurdles she would have had to overcome, were startling. She became the first woman to have a scientific paper published by the Paris Academy, wrote essays, letters and books on philosophy and science. She debated with the intellectuals of the day, even donning male clothing to gain admission to the Café Gradol, from which women were banned, to converse on subjects with her male peers. Her published works include “Institutions de Physique” in 1740 and a translation and commentary of Newton’s “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica,” which was published after her death. She played the harpsichord, danced, sang opera and was an actress. When she was young, she even devised a mathematical system to make money from gambling to pay for books.

Her personal life was equally impressive. Married off at an early age to Marquis Florent-Claude du Chastellet-Lomont, to whom she dutifully bore three children, she then pursued her own independent life, setting up a house with Voltaire in which she built her own laboratory to carry out her research. Unfortunately, until recently, her fame was derived mainly from being his appendage, even though Voltaire himself saw and treated her as an intellectual equal. In 1738, she became pregnant to Jean-François de Saint-Lambert and fretted about dying in childbirth; although she did manage to give birth to a daughter, she died a few days later.

Hers was a life lived to the full. She refused to be cowed by the restrictions of the day and battled against the odds to notch up a string of achievements in the fields of physics and mathematics, for which she has only recently received due recognition. It is a life that is ready-made for the opera stage.

Saariaho, along with the librettist Amin Maalouf, started work on “Emilie” in 2008, and together they produced a work in nine scenes in the form of a monodrama. The character Emilie is alone on stage for the entire opera, which lasts approximately 75 minutes. She is in the latter stages of her pregnancy, and, certain that it will be the cause of her death, she reflects on her scientific endeavors and significant personal experiences. She is also desperate to finish her work on Newton’s “Principia” and worries that Emilie, the scientist, will be forgotten. It is a work of emotional extremes that explores her anxieties, fears and ecstasies. It captures the conflict between her passionate personal nature, in which she allows herself to be delighted by her love for men, jewelry and gambling, and her rational, scientific mind with her commitment to deepening her knowledge of the universe.

Each of the nine scenes takes an aspect of her life, starting with the premonition of her forthcoming death and thoughts about her gravestone. She reflects on her relationship with Voltaire and how his love has cooled. She muses on her love of knowledge and scientific exploration and how human nature is motivated by a combination of self-love and reason. Her love for Saint-Lambert encourages her to compare the physical phenomenon of fire with the passion of love. She voices her negative thoughts about her pregnancy and offers advice to her unborn baby about how to approach life. Finally, she expresses her fears about not completing her scientific work and of being forgotten.

It is a formidable portrait of a woman full of contradictions, nuances and excess. In other words, it is a realistic picture of the human condition; nothing is simple, wholly rational or consistent.

A Fragmented Emilie

At its premiere in 2010 at the Opéra National de Lyon, Emilie was played by soprano Karita Mattila. However, for the production at Mainz Staatstheater, the character of Emilie was divided into four parts, comprising three sopranos and a dancer, each depicting a certain aspect of her character. It was a decision taken with the blessing of Saariaho before her death last year.

The director, Immo Karaman, decided to divide the stage into four cubes on two levels, designed by Philipp Contag-Lada. Each cube was identical, containing a chair, a desk and a female mannequin for hanging clothes. The cubes were black, with bright strip lighting around the edges. In each cube was positioned one of the four Emilies, where they remained confined for the whole performance.

The staging, for the most part, was very dark, with spots or strip lighting, which the lighting designer, Frederik Wollek, used to highlight specific cubes, either individually or in different combinations. When Emilie is reflecting on Newton’s “Principia” or her scientific research, videos of mathematical symbols fill up the walls of the cubes.

Fabian Posca dressed all four Emilies in identical typical 18th century costumes, which were easy for the singer to discard or alter. Apparently, Emilie was very proud of her cleavage and would often dress to draw attention to it, something that his costume design easily accommodated. Posca was also responsible for the choreography, which was quite complex and, at times, very animated. Occasionally, the four Emilies moved together in exactly the same way, while at other times only one or a combination of the Emilies would be required to move while the others remained static. Their movements were largely, although not always, tense, anxious and frenetic, and proved to be an unsettling experience for the audience.

The fragmentation of Emilie into four characters worked well as it brought different possible interpretations into play. Were we watching Emilie’s inner dialogue and her inner conflicts and contradictions, or were they simply disparate parts of her character voicing her different feelings? What was the role of the dancer? Was she there to represent the physical composite or an unconscious expression? Possibly, she was the physical outcome of her inner anxieties, fears and pleasures. Is this why she collapses before the dialogue ends, exhausted by her tumult of excess emotion? It really did not matter, for Karaman’s presentation did what all good theatre should do, which is to set the mind thinking about the subject matter in a meaningful way and open up different perspectives about life in general.

Saariaho’s Unsettling Score Brought Sensitively to Life

The musical director, Hermann Bäumer, conducting the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, did a superb job in creating a sound world that brilliantly captured Emilie’s layered emotions. Constantly on the move, the music rarely settles; Saariaho’s sound world, with its frequent changes of rhythm, texture and dynamics, along with her use of an interesting array of instruments, ranging from the harpsichord to the marimba and electronic sound, creates a sense of restlessness and uncertainty, dotted by oases of brooding intensity, which were neatly captured in Bäumer’s reading.

The four Emilies were played by sopranos Julietta Aleksanyan, Alexandra Samouilidou, Maren Schwier and the dancer Bettina Fritsche, who also contributed with electronically altered speech. The singers sang individually, in pairs, or all together, depending on how the text related to different aspects of her character. It demanded a lot from the singers in terms of their ability to mould the vocal line to meet the required levels of expressivity, and all performed exceptionally well. Aleksanyan, who appeared to represent Emilie’s amorous passions, sang with a greater degree of expansiveness, was often more relaxed, and was not forced to push her voice to the extreme as much as Samouilidou or Schwier, who were often emotionally operating at the edge. Their relationship to each other was fascinating to observe; at times they were very close and sympathetic, while at other times their presentations moved apart in very different directions. Putting the four characterizations together into a single entity sparked interesting thoughts about how very different aspects, passions, thoughts and emotional states are able to co-exist within a person almost simultaneously.

The result was a wonderfully layered presentation of Emilie on a very human level. It was not, however, an easy opera with which to engage. The audience was never allowed to feel at ease, and its conclusion that the passions and reasoning that drive people forward ultimately lead to contradictions and unhappiness is not particularly uplifting.