Contemporary Music Review, 2019

Vol. 38, Nos. 3–4, 389–417, https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2019.1596639

Composing Clémence in L’amour

de loin
Joy H. Calico

This article expands our knowledge of the inception of the opera, L’amour de loin, by
introducing primary documents from the as-yet uncatalogued Kaija Saariaho
Sammlung (KSS) at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. It then focuses on
the development of the vocal part for Clémence that resulted in two versions of the role,
one for coloratura and one for a lyric soprano, and situates the revision Saariaho
undertook with soprano Dawn Upshaw in the historical tradition of operatic
collaboration. Finally, I interpret the two versions of Clémence through the lens of
operatic vocal Fach to determine how those different characterizations might affect an
audience member’s experience of the opera. I argue that the iterations of Clémence’s two
largest set pieces are so different that one could speak of two discrete versions of L’amour
de loin in which different heroines are envoiced.

Keywords: Kaija Saariaho; L’amour de loin; Fach; Compositional Process; Opera Singers;
Dawn Upshaw

Much has been written about the collaboration between composer Kaija Saariaho,
librettist Amin Maalouf, and director Peter Sellars that produced L’amour de loin
(2000); by any measure one of the great successes in modern (and modernist) opera
history. Its origin story—inspired by the slow modernism of Messiaen’s Saint François
d’Assise and rooted in the vida of twelfth-century troubadour Jaufré Rudel—is well
known, as is Saariaho’s use of live electronics to enhance its modally-inflected and deli-
cately sonorous orchestration. Saariaho wrote the role of Clémence for Dawn Upshaw,
a soprano for whom she had already composed two works (Lonh for soprano and
electronics 1996; Château du l’âme for soloist and orchestra 1996). Those are relatively
brief pieces at 20 and 22 min respectively, however, a major role in a full-length opera
makes altogether different demands on the voice in terms of stamina and tessitura.
Sketches reveal that the tessitura of the role, as originally conceived, was actually a

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

390 J. H. Calico
better fit for a coloratura soprano than for Upshaw’s lyric Fach (voice type—see
detailed discussion below); furthermore, the published score, commercial DVD, an
interview with Upshaw, and correspondence with Saariaho all confirm that the com-
poser revised the role significantly to better suit the soprano. In 2009, Kent Nagano
recorded the opera on Harmonia Mundi using the original, high-tessitura version, fea-
turing Ekaterina Lokhina in the role of Clémence. Thus, as of this writing, the only two
commercial recordings of L’amour de loin—Upshaw on DVD and Lokhina on CD—
present different versions of the same opera, both endorsed by the composer. Yet,
neither indicates that it is one of two possible versions, and scholars and critics
appear to be unaware that two options exist.
Perhaps the existence of two versions has escaped notice because the plot remains
the same, as does the music except for significant sections of Clémence’s vocal line.
In this simple plot, the troubadour Jaufré, Prince of Blaye, dreams of an idealised,
distant woman. A Pilgrim reports that he knows of such a woman: Clémence, Countess
of Tripoli. Jaufré becomes obsessed with Clémence, and the Pilgrim reports this to her.
Initially, Clémence has her doubts (Act II Scene 2), but eventually she succumbs to
fantasies about the troubadour. He decides to go to her, and the Pilgrim takes him
on a harrowing journey across the sea. By the time Jaufré arrives, he is near death,
and the lovers share a tender moment before he dies. In the finale (Act V), Clémence
careens from praying for Jaufré’s recovery to raging against God for letting him die,
and feeling responsible for his death, before finding a kind of peace in a transcendent
state, the precise nature of which—divine or romantic—is deliberately ambiguous.
The purpose of this article is threefold. First, I will expand general knowledge of the
opera’s inception by introducing primary documents related to the development of the
opera from the as-yet uncatalogued Kaija Saariaho Sammlung (KSS) at the Paul Sacher
Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. The collection was acquired in October 2014 through
private sponsorship, and consists primarily of manuscripts as well as some correspon-
dence, reviews, and programmes; there are plans to add recordings and electronic data.
The archival materials examined here include a conceptual sketch delineating each
character in Italian, English, and Finnish; drafts and sketches of voice parts in the com-
poser’s hand; and a comparison of the 2005 ‘high tessitura’ edition of the score with the
version published in 2002 (Saariaho 2002, 2005). Second, I will trace the development
of the role of Clémence, and situate that process within the historical tradition of
operatic collaboration and revision. Finally, I interpret the two versions of Clémence
through the lens of operatic vocal Fach to determine how those different characteris-
ations might affect an audience member’s experience of the opera. I argue that the iter-
ations of Clémence’s two largest set pieces are so dissimilar that one could speak of two
discrete versions of L’amour de loin in which different heroines are envoiced.1

Work Concept—General Overview

Because the Saariaho collection is newly acquired and still uncatalogued, I begin with a
description of the contents from the first folder, ‘Workkonzept’, whose documents
 Contemporary Music Review 391
pertain to the inception of L’amour de loin and date from as early as 1996 (SKSA 1/11
20141009 KSA).2 The life and work of the troubadour Jaufré Rudel always formed the
basis for the project, and Saariaho developed several ideas for how that material might
be fashioned into an opera. An overview of the creative process based on these docu-
ments suggests that she amassed historical and artistic materials from a variety of
sources, worked out large-scale abstract concepts, and then eliminated elements
until she arrived at an essential core. This folder reveals an artist who draws on
poetry, history, visual arts, collaborations with other artists, and her own extant com-
positions for inspiration and raw material in developing new work. Her notes are pri-
marily in French, but also in Finnish and occasionally in English, interspersed with
Italian musical terms; her brainstorms materialise as drawings, scene designs, dia-
grams, and prose. Some documents are handwritten, some are computer printouts,
and others are photocopies of printed material. The folder presents a highly textured
and intertextual account of the early development of the opera.
One sheaf of materials is a kind of concept book entitled Un opera en cours, ‘with
music by Kaija Saariaho and libretto by Jacques Roubaud’, dated April 1996. The
basic text was ‘La Vie Brève de Jaufré Rudel’ from Roubaud’s La Fleur Inverse: essai
sur l’art formel des troubadours (1986). The artwork on the cover is a reproduction
of an oil painting entitled Les Jardins séparés by the artist and stage designer Raija
Malka. Saariaho had already produced a sonic atmosphere for Malka’s 1993 exhibition
La Dame à la licorne in Paris, and would do so again for her Tidelines show in Helsinki
in 2011 (Barrière and Barrière 2016, 86). Elsewhere in the folder, Malka is identified as
the scenographer. Neither Roubaud nor Malka participated in the 2000 production,
but their contributions were vital to the opera’s inception. A very early plot sketch
is considerably more complicated than the final version, featuring a second love
story between Jaufré’s friend Cercamon, another troubadour, and one of Clémence’s
confidantes, as well as the intervention of two supernatural characters (the allegorical
figure of Love and the Bird of Death). There is no pilgrim as intermediary between the
lovers, although there is a chorus of pilgrims.
Saariaho developed the opera according to three abstract ideas: the conceptual
pairing of the mirror and magnifying glass, which is mostly concerned with plot
and character; the kaleidoscope, which governs the interactions of the sonic, visual
and dramaturgical dimensions; and the contrast between concepts of space and time
in the Orient and the Occident. I recount these in hopes that they might prove fruitful
for new analytical approaches to the opera. For the first principle, the mirror and the
magnifying glass, she listed several associations for ‘mirror’ as an object (reflective
surface and inverse image), a symbol (passageway between two worlds, here versus
there, inverse image versus reality), and a formal principle (opposition, inversion,
reversibility). The mirror also acts to separate the part of Jaufré’s life that passes as a
dream of love for the countess from the part that is in the land of death. The magnify-
ing glass has a series of symbolic associations, including circle, cycle, water, repetition,
infinity, curve, hole, enclosure. In a document dated May 1996, she wrote that the
kaleidoscope would act as the second formal principle, determining the interaction
392 J. H. Calico
of the sonic, visual, and dramaturgical dimensions. Much of this is conceived in spatial
terms, and she explains that

each passes through the concrete level (narrative) toward an almost abstract (poetic)
one. Some moments may be as stills, inscribed in time as suspended: sliding of the
real to the micro event in a kind of ‘zooming down’: passage from concrete percep-
tion to abstract perception, from the real to the imaginary.

This process is also defined as sliding, which can occur ‘sequentially, from one scene to
another, or simultaneously, thereby playing on two modes of perception’. She also
described a process whereby ‘certain elements can be “punctured” and then reused
out of context: reworked, varied, transfigured, they will appear before (anticipation)
or after (recall) the context from which they will have been extracted. The principle
of this global form can be schematized’.
For the dramaturgy, Saariaho envisioned two types of scenes: narrative scenes in
which the action unfolds, and scenes that are purely poetic. For the visual element
she planned to ‘explore the same visual principles as in the cinematic image’, which
allows one to play with changes of scale and perspective. Using two scales together
—realistic and oversized—would result in ‘phenomena of ambiguity, of illusion’,
which can in turn lead into ‘the strange, supernatural, the hallucinatory’. She imagined
a first scene in which the Countess would appear on a giant screen in extreme close-up
and slow motion, while Jaufré appears onstage very small and alone, singing of his
distant love. She then described a mirror image for the finale, when his death would
appear close-up on a screen and the Countess would sing of the love from afar.
Musically, she described a similar movement between micro- and macro-sonic events
(‘zooming up/down’, written in English). Several facets of electroacoustics would
allow the sound to travel (tape made in the studio and diffused, sound processing in
real time, amplification), move from the macro sound event (orchestral dimension)
to the micro event, and have a wide dynamic range. ‘Thus, in a change of scale’, she
explains in her notes, ‘an element of a spoken voice or an instrumental sound, treated
and/or amplified, will suddenly become very intimate, as perceived through a sometimes
distorting magnifying glass’.
For the purposes of this article, which will focus primarily on vocal writing, the next
item is particularly intriguing: Saariaho initially considered incorporating speech into
the voice parts. She writes:

Of slipping from the natural voice to the instrumental voice: the vocal writing will
play on several bipolar dimensions interacting with each other: (1) The general
opposition of spoken voice/sung voice: two types of treatment comparable to reci-
tatives and arias of the Mozartian opera. (2) With regard to the modes of the spoken
voice: the opposition of clear versus whispered (timbral axis). (3) Intelligibility and
its opposite, disintegration of meaning.

Notating the spoken parts in some fashion would allow control of the emphasis,
rhythm, and placement of vowels and consonants, and also facilitate transition
 Contemporary Music Review 393
between speech and song. Saariaho also considered character delineation through the
vocal writing. She anticipated that each would be defined by his or her own musical
language, ‘especially with regard to the type of ornamentation developed, which
could evolve according to a change in the psychological state of the character or its
evolution’. Saariaho does not appear to have followed through on this preliminary
ornamentation plan, but we will see that sketches, drafts, and both versions of the com-
pleted opera confirm that each character is defined by particular sonorities. In fact, this
compositional method is the reason she was able to revise Clémence’s vocal line with
relative ease.
The third concept concerns notions of space and time in the West versus those in
the East. Each space has its own tactile textures, colours, and shapes. Jaufré inhabits
an austere world of nature and the elements—stone, greenery, wood, freshness—with
an autumnal colour palette (green, ochre). The spatial orientation in his world is pri-
marily enclosed and vertical: fortresses, dungeons, a moat. In Tripoli, the Countess’s
universe consists of luxurious fabrics and carpets in warm vibrant colours (gold,
purple, violet), scented with heavy perfume. Her space is defined by the curvature
of the architecture and ornamentation. It is a sensual world, open to the sea and
yet suffocating at the same time because she can never leave. Nevertheless, these
two worlds ‘inscribed in a dialectical struggle’ can generate a third universe, that
of the transitory. The two worlds also experience time differently, and this is
evident in their music. Jaufré’s western universe ‘is one of measured time, con-
strained by two-dimensional space: the relation of memory and oblivion’. The Coun-
tess ‘will be able to generate a dilated time, free rhythmic writing, fluctuating, out of
measure (musical culture of orality)’.
This sheaf is followed by a second, marked ‘Notes and Annexes’, containing
additional source texts and research for the project, as well as biographies of the col-
laborators at this stage of development (Saariaho, Roubaud, and Malka). The artwork
on the cover is entitled ‘Le Château de l’âme, huile sur toile, Raija Malka’. Le Château
de l’âme is also the title of a work Saariaho wrote for soprano and orchestra in 1996,
dedicated to and premiered by Upshaw—just one of many instances of intertextual
play involving her own music as part of the creative process. Here we find a photocopy
of the song of Jaufré in medieval notation from Cantigas de Santa Maria (thirteenth
century); a version in modern French from Roubaud’s book Les Troubadours
(1980); Roubaud’s writings on Jaufré and troubadour poetry; histories of Tripoli,
Antioch, and the first crusade, as well as an image of Charlemagne’s massacre of the
pagans; and quotations from Daniel Boorstin’s Les Découvreurs (1986) about the pil-
grims and Christendom, alongside a map dated 1193. Saariaho made notes on the
chess game as a metaphor for East/West symbolic systems taken from Michel Pastour-
eau’s (1990) L’échiquier de Charlemagne, and studied one source that is conspicuously
not about the Middle Ages: Écrits sur le cinéma, by filmmaker and theorist Jean Epstein
(1974–75).
394 J. H. Calico
Sketches and Drafts
The second folder, ‘Skizzen und Entwürfe’, (SKSA 2/11 20141009 KSA) contains two
files, the contents of which are considerably less polished and their arrangement less
methodical than in the ‘Workkonzepte’ folder discussed above. This folder documents
the next stage in the process, in which the composer moves from concept to realis-
ation. Most photocopies and sketches are undated, although there are excerpts of cor-
respondence from 1997 to 1998 intermingled with notes (both typed and
handwritten). I will focus on one item in the first file: a five-page document titled,
‘Alain Olivier Rencontre avec Kaija Saariaho, Helsinki, 28 et 29 décembre 1997’. It
lays out Saariaho’s priorities for the libretto as she moves from the original idea
suggested by Roubaud toward a version to be undertaken with Amin Maalouf. She
reserves the right to treat the text freely, as she had in Le Château de l’âme and
Lonh. These two pieces, both from 1996, form a significant intertextual node for
L’amour de loin: both were written for Upshaw, and Lonh is a setting of Jaufré’s
poetry. Significant portions of the text, music, and live electronics in L’amour de
loin are indebted to those of Lonh.3
This document presents a clear statement of Saariaho’s priorities for a libretto. The
narrative aspect is not always paramount; conventional recitative should be minimal,
and the text should concentrate on moments of pure expression and poetry; a text
could leave room for other modes of representation via symphonic music with
images but no words. Planned revisions to the original text included removing the
supernatural elements; ending the opera shortly after the hero’s death, as Maalouf
has requested; and addressing issues with the secondary characters, who do not
seem necessary to the action (the second woman character is particularly problematic).
Here she talks about voice types and notes that ‘the countess [is] a soprano voice (like
that of Dawn Upshaw)’. Saariaho also acknowledges the musico-dramatic challenges of
using Jaufré’s biography as the basis for an opera. These include composing and staging
the sea voyage and Jaufré’s illness; the risk that the Countess might come across as a
mere object of desire rather than a full-fledged character; the fact that the lovers’
meeting is not a climax in any conventional sense; and her conviction that the Coun-
tess’s decision to enter a convent must come from an irreversible change in her heart.4
She describes this document as a kind of framework from which both librettist and
composer can begin, and looks forward to their first meeting in March 1998, when
she and Maalouf will establish the general plan for the opera, as well as its stylistic
orientation.
The second file in this folder contains the earliest musical material for the opera
(apart from previously composed works, such as Le Château de l’âme and Lonh),
and nearly all of it takes the form of drafts of vocal parts. However, there are several
other items worth mentioning first. In a handwritten note dated 2/3/99, Saariaho
reduced the cast to three characters and determined their voice types (Jaufré baritone,
Comtesse soprano, Le Pèlerin mezzo). She also lists some key dramatic nodes that will
structure the opera (le destin ‘turning point’, rêve, la mer)5 and the name Bill Viola,
 Contemporary Music Review 395
suggesting that at this point she hoped to involve the video artist in the production. On
the back of a letter to Evamaria Wieser at the Salzburg Festival, dated Paris 14/4/99, she
wrote ‘Peter, Hampson, orchestra, Kent, texte, choir 24’. Presumably, Peter refers to
the director Peter Sellars, Hampson to the baritone Thomas Hampson, and Kent to
the conductor Kent Nagano. Of the three, only Hampson was not involved in the
world premiere at Salzburg in August 2000 (Dwayne Croft sang the role of Jaufré
and Dagmar Pecková played the Pilgrim). Elsewhere, she made a note to check
whether Nagano was tuning to 440 or 442, used orange graph paper to map out the
timing of major events in each act based on musico-dramatic events, and referred
to her use of filters in Stilleben and reverb in Le Château de l’âme.
This file also contains two documents identified by Saariaho herself as the most
important for the composition of L’amour de loin: the first is a diagram of ideas and
features for each character, and the second is a page of chords assigned to each of
them.6 The diagram sketch is dated 3/3/99, and appears as Figure 1; the English trans-
lation is Figure 2.7 The page is in landscape orientation with Jaufré on the left and
Clémence on the right, reflecting their geographic positioning in West and East
respectively, and the Pilgrim in between.8 Most of the text is in Finnish; there are a
few words in English intermingled with some musical terms in Italian. Jaufré and
Clémence are each associated with four musical terms, and two of them overlap.

Figure 1 Diagram dated 3/3/99. Paul Sacher Foundation, Kaija Saariaho Collection. Used
by permission.
396 J. H. Calico

Figure 2 English translation of Figure One.

His adjectives are espressivo, doloroso, energico, dolce (expressive, sad, energetic, and
sweet); hers are dolente, calmo, dolce, espressivo (tender, calm, sweet, and expressive).
Otherwise, Saariaho sets up several elements of contrast between the two, not all of
which appear in the final score. His bass line is described as ‘restless’ while hers is
‘static’; his music features ascending glissandos and hers move in descending
motion; he ‘cranes’ toward Clémence and she reaches out for Jaufré; he will be associ-
ated with the timbres of mallets and the harp, she with metals and particularly the
trumpet; he has a pulsing, active rhythm while her line will be floating and unevenly
paced with ornaments and trills. Between them, in the middle of the page, Saariaho
notes that character delineation is primarily a function of exaggeration to ensure suffi-
cient contrast. The musical means for achieving this contrast (harmony, orchestration,
possibly tempo) are given. Below this list, in the middle of the page, is the Pilgrim, who
acts as intermediary between the lovers and whose vocal style connects the two worlds.
A hand-drawn circle groups the Pilgrim with the category of ‘misterioso’, in which the
bass line will behave in yet a third way, and flutes and interpolations are prominent.
This sketch further reveals the importance of intertextuality for the project, as it
refers to several of the composer’s other pieces. The phrase ‘Château V’ alludes to
Château de l’âme and is followed by ‘everything already written can be used as
material’; that could also refer to Lonh and the orchestral work Oltra Mar (1998),
and to other pieces not mentioned by name. She makes a note to consult her electro-
acoustic piece Stilleben (1988) (which in turn drew heavily on her 1986 Lichtbogen)
regarding orchestral material for the choir, and to remember the ways in which she
created sudden changes of mood in Amers (1992) for cello, orchestra and electronics
when she composes the dialogues.
 Contemporary Music Review 397
The second document Saariaho identified as most important for composing
L’amour de loin contains the chords she associated with each character, as well as
one labelled ‘basic chord’, which is the fundamental sonority for the entire opera
(Figure 3).9 The basic chord is anchored in a low B-flat, and that pitch acts as a
pedal tone across all five acts (Neytcheva 2008, 221). Jaufré’s five sonorities are labelled
lower-case a through e, and Clémence’s six sonorities are labelled upper-case A
through F. Saariaho created sonorities for the Pilgrim that reflect the person he is
with at any given time, to characterise his role as intermediary; his six chords are
labelled 1J through 3J (for interactions with Jaufré) and 1C through 3C (for inter-
actions with Clémence). The basic chord and these sonorities are the filters for
nearly all of the electronic parts as well.10 It is a remarkably elegant conception of char-
acter delineation, applied to both harmony and melody. As noted above, this method
also meant that revising Clémence’s vocal line was an efficient process that required no
intervention in the non-vocal parts.

The Vocal Writing: Composing (and Recomposing) Clémence

Most of the contents in the second file of the ‘Skizzen und Entwürfe’ folder are hand-
written, unaccompanied vocal parts on 12-stave paper (Star-Skizzenblock, Nr. 307/12).

Figure 3 Basic chord and sonorities for the three characters. Paul Sacher Foundation, Kaija
Saariaho (2002) Collection. Used by permission.
398 J. H. Calico
These typically have pitches and words but no rhythm or metre. In some instances, Saar-
iaho annotates the poetic form of a diegetic song with lower-case letters in the left margin
(not to be confused with the lower-case letters that demarcate Jaufré’s sonorities above).
What is most striking about these documents is that, while they are clearly not fair
copies, there is little evidence of revision, despite being written mostly in ink. In fact,
the vocal lines for Jaufré and Le Pèlerin are virtually identical to those published in
the 2002 score. These materials give the impression that the vocal parts emerged fairly
quickly, presumably because the setting is largely syllabic and driven by the stress of
the poetry (and in some instances intentionally modelled on that of troubadour
song), and each character’s distinctive sonorities were worked out in advance.
However, while examining the sketches for Clémence’s aria from the finale (‘De quoi
as-tu voulu le penir’), I was struck by the extraordinary leaps and the very high tessitura
(Figure 4). As previously noted, the role was written for a lyric soprano, but this tessitura
appears more appropriate for a coloratura. I then began paying particular attention to all
the drafts for Clémence’s part, and found this to be consistently true: the tessitura lies too
high for Upshaw’s Fach. The vocal writing for Clémence that appears in the page proofs
(SKSA 8/11 and 9/11 Partitur [Probedruck m. uss. Korr.u.a. Gutr.]), is virtually identical
to that found in these drafts. Yet when I compared the sketches and the page proofs to
the 2002 published score, I found that many passages in print had been revised

Figure 4 Comparison of high tessitura and published versions of mm. 602–647, Act II
scene as-tu voulu le penir. Paul Sacher Foundation, Kaija Saariaho Collection. Used by
permission.
 Contemporary Music Review 399
downward, apparently to accommodate a lower tessitura. The vocal lines of two of
Clémence’s arias were so radically altered, however, that they might arguably constitute
different pieces, as will be discussed below.
The archive is moot about the process whereby Saariaho moved from the high-tes-
situra page proofs to the published score for a lyric soprano, so I began trying to recon-
struct it. This triggered a memory of an article in the programme for the American
premiere of L’amour de loin at the Santa Fe Opera in 2002, in which Upshaw recounted
the Salzburg premiere:

Kaija had sent me things over a long period of time while she was working on the
score, which was terrific, but it’s hard to get a feeling for stamina, what it takes to
do an entire role—and it’s a big role. Once I was on stage there wasn’t much
time to break or rest. Even though we had quite a lot of contact beforehand I
didn’t really know how difficult some things would be until we got together and
did the whole opera.

That experience led to a candid conversation between the collaborators:

After Salzburg I went to Kaija and said, you know, a higher type of soprano could
probably do what you’ve written with more ease than I can. I will certainly under-
stand, if those notes are very important to you, but I cannot do this again. You can
find someone who sings those pitches, or rewrite certain sections for me. (Fleming
2002, n.p.)

According to Fleming’s article, Saariaho ‘fully understood’ Upshaw’s request, and

altered the vocal line accordingly.
Recently the composer confirmed this account in an email exchange, and provided
additional details about the process. Saariaho had already made a few changes in Salz-
burg in 2000 so that the part would be less taxing in the premiere run, but undertook
large-scale revisions to the role between that time and the performances in Paris in
November 2001. Saariaho remembers Upshaw explaining that the role stayed too
much on E and F, which meant it sat in her passaggio (the transition area between
vocal registers) and was therefore vocally taxing. ‘Ironically I had used those pitches
a lot, because I loved her voice especially on those notes, and particularly on E,
which Messiaen had used much in his opera [Saint François d’Assise], and which I
heard sung a lot by Dawn’.11 They had been in close contact during the compositional
process but had not discussed this. (As Upshaw noted above, learning the role a bit at a
time as it was composed, rather than in its entirety, meant that she did not have a clear
sense of the stamina it would require. Note that the range remains the same.) Saariaho
explains:

So one aim with the new line was to diminish the tiring pitches and not to stay on
them too much—to bring down many of the endings on long Es and Fs—and sec-
ondly, just give the voice a possibility to come down more often to rest. I had written
two works for Dawn earlier, and knew her voice quite well, but as this was my first
400 J. H. Calico
opera, I hadn’t understood how taxing the role was in its entirety … . But my aim
when doing the changes was above all to give Dawn comfort, as the last thing I
wanted was to harm her voice.12

Upshaw stressed in a phone interview that singing a role in which the tessitura is too
high is not only fatiguing but, more importantly, it limits her expressive capabilities, as
she prefers to use the full range of her voice.13
Some excerpts will illustrate the types of changes Saariaho made to the role of Clém-
ence. Figures 5 and 6 juxtapose passages from arias in Act II Scene 2 and Act V Scene 3
respectively for comparison purposes.14 First is the high tessitura version: the role as
originally composed and preserved in these sketches, then made available to perfor-
mers in 2005 as the high tessitura edition when Kent Nagano (2009) recorded it
with Lekhina. Below that is the version from the 2002 published score, as Saariaho
(2002, 2005) recomposed it for Upshaw after the Salzburg premiere, as she sang it
live from then on, and as it is recorded on DVD.
In addition to avoiding sustained Es and Fs at phrase endings, Saariaho stated that she
‘often brought the soprano line a third down, which sits well in the harmony built on
thirds and minor seconds, or simply an octave’.15 A third or even a minor second
down is a sensible solution for avoiding the passaggio, and that is frequently the case
throughout the opera. In the excerpts shown in Figures 5 and 6, it is not simply a
matter of transposing the aria to a new key a third below, however. These are not
number arias, and, as shown in Figure 3 above, the composer had created the opera
out of a palette of sonorities affiliated with each character, so Clémence’s new melodies
were derived from those harmonies as well. Upshaw marvelled at how quickly the com-
poser rewrote the part, and attributed that efficiency to the fact that the same pitch content
is still used; it is just in a different octave or displaced to a different part of the measure. She
pointed to m. 551 in Act V Scene 3 to illustrate her point.16 The horizontal-vertical inte-
gration of the pitch field and the use of specific sonorities for each character meant that the
instrumental parts could remain virtually unchanged. Only some percussion instruments
have ossia (although that is not the case in the excerpts examined here).17
I was surprised to learn from Saariaho that ‘both versions are available, and sung
frequently; I let the singers choose’.18 She continued, ‘also sometimes they combine
the two, which normally isn’t a problem’, as it depends on the individual voice.19
This suggests that singers, conductors, and opera companies are aware that two ver-
sions of Clémence exist (as does the option for a hybrid), but I have not seen it dis-
cussed in reviews of live performances. It may be more accurate to say that Nagano
is an advocate for the high tessitura version. Saariaho’s manager confirmed that the
high tessitura edition has been sung by only one other soprano: Magali de Prelle,
who performed the role with the German Symphony Orchestra in 2006 under the
baton of Kent Nagano—the same conductor and ensemble who recorded the high tes-
situra version on CD with Lekhina (Nagano 2009).20 Finally, reviews of that CD, which
postdates the DVD by four years and is frequently compared to it, do not note that the
soprano part is different, despite the fact that Upshaw and Lekhina have very different
 Contemporary Music Review 401

Figure 5 Comparison of high tessitura and published versions of mm. 602–647, Act II
Scene 2.

voices.21 This is not meant as a criticism of the reviewers. After all, when operas exist in
multiple versions, each endorsed at one time or another by the composer, liner notes
or concert programmes typically identify which version is being performed. Consider
402 J. H. Calico

Figure 5 Continued

Verdi’s Don Carlo, which exists in the original French as well as multiple Italian ver-
sions, the last two of which were also sanctioned by the composer and have come to be
known by the cities in which they were first performed (the Milan and Modena ver-
sions). The CD liner notes do not mention that Lekhina sings the high-tessitura
 Contemporary Music Review 403

Figure 5 Continued

version of Clémence, even though the other operatic roles listed in her accompanying
biography leave no doubt as to her Fach (Zerbinetta in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos,
Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Olympia
in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann). Critics have no reason to suspect that they
404 J. H. Calico

Figure 6. Comparison of high tessitura and published versions of mm. 545–596, Act V
Scene 3.

are hearing different versions. Furthermore, aside from the diegetic troubadour songs,
this is not a numbers opera, so arias do not have the stand-alone quality more com-
monly found in diatonic operas that use tonally-defined closed forms. Perhaps this
is a testament to the efficacy of Saariaho’s pitch-field method of character delineation.
 Contemporary Music Review 405

Figure 6 Continued

Despite new melodies with different contours and tessituras, the pitch content is still
derived from Clémence’s essential sonorities, so these lines are equally well integrated
into the fabric of the opera as a whole (although Saariaho conceded that she did have to
‘break some of [her] systematic rules when recreating the line’).22 The overall style
remains the same; text setting is still largely syllabic and the rhythms are virtually
406 J. H. Calico

Figure 6 Continued

unchanged because they are determined by speech patterns. Finally, despite the fact
that L’amour de loin has enjoyed multiple productions and is performed quite often
by the standards of contemporary opera, the 2002 score is not widely available
outside of university libraries, and the 2005 score is not available at all unless one
 Contemporary Music Review 407

Figure 6 Continued

knows to ask for it in preparation for a performance. This makes it unlikely that critics
would have a score at hand. It also seems plausible that the critics who typically review
opera produced by major companies and record labels, and those who review new
music, may be acculturated to listen for and prioritise different things.

Operatic Conventions of Collaboration, Revision, and Fach

Some reviewers did observe that Lekhina’s characterisation of Clément differs from
that of Upshaw. Having no reason to think that she might actually be singing a differ-
ent version of the role, Ronald E. Grames attributes the difference to timbre (‘Upshaw
is superb, but Ekaterina Lekhina—with a brighter voice that is less earthy and emotion-
laden—produces an equally valid portrayal, rather sharper and more conflicted and
self-aware’).23 Grames recognises that different voice types convey different character
types, and this is part of the aesthetic convention behind the notion of Fach in opera.
(The professional reason that Fach is invoked in Fest contracts—a company contract
as opposed to a guest appearance—in German-speaking countries is so singers cannot
be forced to sing roles that are inappropriate for them. A lyric and a coloratura are both
sopranos, but they do not sing the same repertoire.) When I asked Upshaw and Saar-
iaho about this, however, both said the issue of Fach had never come up. Upshaw
acknowledged the conventions of Fach with regard to vocal features and character
type, but stated that the colours of an individual singer’s voice are most important
for creating a role; Saariaho was aware that ‘the changes will slightly change our per-
ception of Clémence’. She continued, ‘the high version is more brilliant and princess-
like, shining with the high metal percussion. The lower is more human’.24 Her assess-
ment is strikingly similar to Grames’s review above, in which he describes Lekhina’s
voice as brighter and less earthy. As a listener and opera scholar, however, I cannot
help but think of the two versions of Clémence in terms of Fach. The remainder of
this essay will situate Clémence within a historical tradition of revising opera roles,
and consider the ways in which reading the two versions of these excerpts through
the lens of Fach convention results in two different, equally legitimate versions of
that character.
408 J. H. Calico
Revisions
Because composers have always written for specific performers, an opera score can be
read as a palimpsest. The timbre, agility, power, sweet spots, tessituras, strengths and
weaknesses of those singers, many of whom are now lost to history, determined the
shape and style of vocal lines within parameters of style and convention, thereby defin-
ing those characters. Handel composed the titular role in Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724)
for the alto castrato Senesino, whose voice is revealed to us in the arias. He was clearly
adept at rapid-fire passagework and had extraordinary breath control; he also had a
rather narrow range. In the nineteenth century, composers were still writing for indi-
vidual singers, but as a canon coalesced and the business model changed, revivals
became much more common, and that meant new singers would take on roles orig-
inally written for someone else. Therefore, it has long been acceptable and necessary
for composers, or singers themselves, to revise melodies for performers who cannot
sing the work as written. According to Philip Gossett, these revisions most often
took the form of puntature, defined as follows:

Small adjustments to the melodic line. They accommodate places where a specific
voice is unable momentarily to cope with the requirements of the music, because
the music is especially high, low, or florid, because it demands great breath
control, and so on. Singers should avoid parts they cannot perform without a
large number of puntature. (Gossett 2006, 615)

Such adjustments are small and pragmatic in nature, and, as Gossett notes, ‘are
required exclusively to assist a singer in performing passages that are awkward for
his or her voice or that pose problems of breathing and syllable placement’ (Gossett
2006, 324). These are the most common types of revisions, both then and now, and
performers regularly make such adjustments when performing canonical roles. A
quick glance at the two versions of Clémence’s arias in Figures 5 and 6 above reveal
some isolated instances that might be described as puntature, such as m. 584 in
Figure 6, in which the vocal lines are identical except for the high C, which is
changed to a high A. Overall, the number and magnitude of the changes far exceed
this category of revision.
Gossett also tells us that ‘when appropriate singers were unavailable [for a revival],
and puntature were insufficient, composers intervened more heavily’ (Gossett 2006,
226). He cites the example of Meyerbeer, who wrote a role for the last great castrato,
Giambattista Velluti, in his opera Il crociato in Egitto (1824). Velluti was at the end of
his career, however, and the figure of the castrato had fallen out of favour generally, so
the only way for the opera to survive was for Meyerbeer to rewrite the part. He revised
it for a mezzo-soprano and Giuditta Pasta went on to perform it to great acclaim. This
is much closer to the scale of the revision Saariaho made to Clémence’s role. It is also
worth noting that the history of opera in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is rife
with aria substitution, some of it by composers themselves. Mozart replaced Susanna’s
aria ‘Deh vieni, non tardar’ with ‘Al desio di chi t’adora’ for the Viennese revival of Le
 Contemporary Music Review 409
nozze di Figaro in 1789; Donizetti recycled an aria from his Rosmonda d’Inghilterra and
used it instead of Lucia’s original cavatina when he reworked Lucia di Lammermoor as
Lucie de Lammermoor for Paris. Aria insertion and substitution were more often the
purview of singers, however, who could trade out arias provided by the composer
for others they liked better, or simply add their favourites to those already in the
score.25 In pre-Wagnerian opera it may have been easier to swap out an aria, but
the style and texture of L’amour de loin are clearly not conducive to wholesale substi-
tution from another work. As long as Saariaho wrote new melodies from the same
pitch field and took Upshaw’s tessitura into account, she could revise the part to
better suit the soprano’s voice while retaining the essence of the character’s sonic iden-
tity the way she conceived it. Saariaho’s compositional process, in which characters are
associated with particular sonorities in both harmony and melody, enables a different
kind of adaptation that seems to sit somewhere along the traditional operatic conti-
nuum of revision between puntature on one end and wholesale substitution on the
other. (To be clear, Saariaho and Upshaw consider it revision; as a listener and
opera scholar, I hear it inclining toward something else.)
It is worth noting that the relationship between Saariaho and Upshaw also sits
quite comfortably within an operatic tradition of composer-singer collaboration in
which the artists act as co-creators. Saariaho shared material with the singer as
she composed the opera, made changes to better suit her during the reality check
of rehearsals, and when the role still proved to be an uncomfortable fit, reworked
the tessitura to make it even more idiomatic for the singer. It was clearly a mutually
beneficial partnership and they are unfailingly complimentary of one another in
their accounts of the process, praising each other’s artistry and collaborative
spirits. It is also worth remembering, however, that while Saariaho was a favourite
on the contemporary music scene in 2000 she was a complete unknown in the world
of opera, while Upshaw was a much-beloved international superstar. It would have
been unwise for Saariaho to insist upon a version of the role that did not suit her
biggest star, just as the composer was breaking into a new genre and new audiences
were encountering her music for the first time. Such pragmatism has long been a
hallmark of successful approaches to opera composition. The fact that she has
gone on to compose three more works in the opera/music theatre category attests
to her skill in negotiating the practicalities of both voice and stage (Adriana
Mater 2005: Emilie 2008; Only the Sound Remains 2015).

Fach
The German word ‘Fach’ literally means ‘specialty’, and in the world of opera that term
refers to vocal categories. These go well beyond the generic soprano, mezzo-soprano,
alto, tenor, baritone, and bass designations, which tell us broadly about a singer’s range
and a bit about her tessitura (the part of the vocal range in which a particular singer
sounds best and is most comfortable). These broad categories are subdivided into
twenty-five standard types of Fach, and there are several others in use as well. If the
410 J. H. Calico
designation ‘soprano’ is a large general category, akin to that of family in biology, then
the subdivisions of lyric coloratura soprano, dramatic soprano, lyric soprano, and so
forth, i.e. the Fächer, can be likened to genera that identify different kinds of sopranos.
These connote much more specific information than range and tessitura: each Fach
has associated qualities of vocal timbre, size, and agility, often manifested in a particu-
lar physiology and body type, and correlated to types of operatic characters grouped
primarily by age and seriousness. (It should also be noted that some roles appear in
multiple, adjacent Fach categories, so the classification is less a hard-and-fast rule
than a matter of associative convention entailing all the qualities listed above.) As
noted above, in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland the Fach defines a singer’s contract
with an opera company, and the standard repertory opera roles are categorised accord-
ing to Fach.26 For example, the characters of Marzelline and Leonore in Beethoven’s
Fidelio are both sopranos, meaning they have similar ranges and tessituras and are
not mezzo-sopranos, but these roles would not be performed by the same singer. Mar-
zelline’s character is a remnant of opera buffa, young and love-struck, so her role is
high and relatively light in order to give voice to these features; that role is typically
sung by a soubrette or light lyric. Leonore’s character is a heroic woman who disguises
herself as a man in order to rescue her husband from a political prison. Her role
requires a voice of considerable heft and incisive timbre to convey the requisite gravitas
and courage and to sail above a large orchestra, so she is typically sung by a dramatic
soprano.
Saariaho’s L’amour de loin is arguably poised to join the operatic canon, which
means that the roles may soon be parsed according to Fach for both character and con-
tract purposes. If the two singers who have recorded the role thus far are any indi-
cation, Clémence would be listed as a role for lyric soprano in the revised version
(Upshaw) and for coloratura soprano in the high-tessitura version (Lokhina). The
general attributes of those Fächer are as follows. The lyric voice is most common
and is typically described as warm, capable of singing long legato phrases and high
notes with ease, relatively flexible, having a full sound and warm timbre. Her range
is C4 to C6, and representative roles include the Countess in Mozart’s Le nozze di
Figaro, the title role in Jules Massenet’s Manon, Mimi and Musetta in Puccini’s La
bohème (although the two performers would need distinctive timbres and onstage per-
sonas), and Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen. Just as there is a wide variety of characters in
this category, so too is there a wide range of singers who fit this type. The coloratura
voice, on the other hand, is typically described as light, bright and clear, capable of
extreme flexibility and agility in rapid florid passages. The range is typically C4 to
F6, although it is common for singers in this Fach to touch notes above F6 in the
course of fioritura. Her standard roles include Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss’s
Ariadne auf Naxos, Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto, and Olympia in Offenbach’s Les
Contes d’Hoffmann. These characters are young and often fragile. This is a rarer
voice type, and thus more circumscribed in terms of features and more precise in
terms of character. There is little overlap between the roles portrayed by lyric sopranos
and those portrayed by coloraturas.
 Contemporary Music Review 411
Let us consider the ways in which the different versions of this text setting, and the
attendant attributes of the Fächer for coloratura and lyric soprano, contribute to
characterisation. The passage excerpted in Figure 5 above is from Act II Scene 2.
The Pilgrim has just informed the Countess that Jaufré sings of her as his idealised
love from afar. At first, Clémence appears haughty and offended by his temerity,
but after the Pilgrim leaves, she sings an aria in which she reveals herself to be insecure
and self-critical, citing all the reasons she is unworthy of his love (‘si ce troubadour me
connaissait’).

Si ce troubadour me connaissait, m’aurait-il chantée avec tant de ferveur?

M’aurait-il chantée s’il avait pu sonder mon âme?
Belle sans l’arrogance de la beauté, lui a-t-on dit …
Belle? Mais regardant sans cesse autour de moi pour
m’assurer qu’aucune autre femme n’est plus belle!
Noble sans l’arrogance de la noblesse? Mai je convoite
à la fois les terres d’Occident et les terres d’Orient,
comme si la Providence avait une dette envers moi!
Pieuse sans l’arrogance de la piété? Mais je me pavane
dans mes plus beaux vêtements sur le chemin de la
messe, puis je m’agenouille dans l’église, l’esprit vide!
Troubadour, je ne suis belle
Que dans le miroir de tes mots.

If this troubadour had known me, would he have sung with such fervour?
Would he have sung thus if he had sounded the depths of my soul?
Beautiful without the arrogance of beauty, they told him …
Beautiful? Yet always looking around me to make sure
No other woman is more beautiful!
Noble without the arrogance of nobility? Yet I covet both
the eastern and the western lands,
as if providence were indebted to me!
Pious without the arrogance of piety? Yet I strut to mass
in my finery, then kneel in church, my spirit empty!
Troubadour, I am not beautiful,
except in the mirror of your words.27

The dynamics, tempos, and performance instructions are the same in both scores
and are printed above the top line only for clarity of presentation. In the text, Clémence
considers the three traits Jaufré attributed to her in turn, reviewing them as questions
posed softly at first and then more adamantly, and each time she answers the question
in the negative, loudly and in an agitated state. At rehearsal W2 the orchestration is
sparse, with sustained B’s in the oboes and tinkling high percussion outlining the
essential content of her first chord (marked A) from Figure 3: B-flat, C#, E, F, A. As
she poses the first question (‘Belle?’) at m. 608f, she is accompanied by low tremolo
strings and both harps whose pitch content appears to be drawn from her final
chord (marked E): B-flat, F, C#, D, F# [G-flat]; the harp interjection before her
second question at X2 (‘Noble’) reiterates the percussion pattern from W2
412 J. H. Calico
(chord A). The vocal line is quite exposed, with only a sustained quiet oboe D and flute
trill on A#, before she answers this question at m. 619 to the same low string and harp
material over which she answered the first question. The third question (‘Pieuse’) and
her answer are accompanied by motifs in the violin, piano, harp and oboe derived from
her vocal line; the pitch content appears to be derived from chord E with an added
G. She sings her final line with only sustained low B-flats in the strings and a nearly
imperceptible rumble in the bass drum; the harp plays out the end of the act with
arpeggiated quintuplets of chord A.
The rhetorical logic of the original high-tessitura version is clear. The questions
are posed at sequentially higher pitch levels, ratcheting up the tension gradually as
the line ascends, while in the published version the questions move from mid to
low to high range. In this excerpt, the lyric version has two high A’s, while the
high version has four high A’s and two high B-flats; all are short, with the exception
of the final note for each version. The text setting is syllabic, and the rhythms are
virtually unchanged, which means the high-tessitura version does not exhibit the
agility frequently associated with coloratura characters; instead, the impression is
created through timbre, weight, prevalence of high notes, and tessitura—features
of a character who can perform feats of fioritura, even if she is not doing so at
the moment. The crux of the aria, and of our understanding of this character,
comes at the very end, when she sings that she is beautiful only in the reflection
of the words the poet wrote about her. This phrase (mm. 639 to the end) is iden-
tical in both settings. The line suited Upshaw’s tessitura and thus did not need revi-
sion (notice how it traverses a wide range, echoing Upshaw’s preference for using
her entire voice). The aria ends on a sustained high note that is resonant and idio-
matic in both voice types. From a character standpoint, we discover that she is
moved by Jaufré’s commitment to her, takes seriously the power of his words,
and recognises what they reveal about herself. The relation of this phrase to the
rest of this aria, however, is telling. Lyric Clémence has scarcely touched this
range, reserving the highest note for the climax of the aria; coloratura Clémence
has flitted in and out of this range throughout, suggesting a more erratic, more
emotional, and perhaps less mature figure.
The excerpt in Figure 6 is from Act V Scene 3. The Pilgrim has brought Jaufré to
Clémence, but he is near death by the time he arrives. This setting gives rise to a
kind of double-aria construction. In the first aria (the equivalent of the cantabile),
Clémence prays for his recovery. This is followed by a wordless passage in which
the Pilgrim signals that Jaufré has passed away while she was praying (the equivalent
of a tempo di mezzo), and in the second aria Clémence rages against God’s indifference
and cruelty (the equivalent of the cabaletta).

J’avais cru en toi, j’avais espéré, mon Dieu

Qu’avec un être si génêaux tu te montrerais plus généaux encore.
J’avais cru en toi, j’avais espéré, mon Dieu
Qu’avec un être aussi aimant tu te montrerais plus capable d’amour encore.
 Contemporary Music Review 413
Que tu nous accorderais un instant, juste un instant de vrai bonheur
Sans souffrance, sans maladie, sans la mort qui s’approche
Un court moment de bonheur simple, était-ce trop?
De quoi as-tu voulu le punir?
De m’avoir appelée déesse?
De s’être prétendu croisé, comme s’il partait se battre
Contre les Infidèles, alors que c’est moi qu’il venait retrouver?
Se pourrait-il que tu sois jaloux du fragile bonheur des hommes?

I believed in thee, I had hope, O God,

That with a being so generous thou wouldst show thyself more generous still.
I believed in thee, I had hope, O God,
That with a being so loving thou wouldst show thyself yet more capable of love.
That thou wouldst grant us an instant, just one instant of true happiness,
Without suffering, without illness, without the approach of death.
A brief moment of simple happiness. Was that too much?
What didst thou seek to punish?
That he called me goddess?
That he pretended to be a crusader, as if he was leaving
to fight the Infidel, when it was me that he came to find?
Could it be that thou art jealous of the fragile happiness of men?28

This is Clémence at her angriest and most human. The orchestra and chorus try to
silence her blasphemy with loud, emphatic interjections (‘silence!’), but after the
orchestra’s sforzando in m. 553 it recedes from the texture and is heard mostly
between her phrases. Her exposed solo line is accompanied almost exclusively by
piano piccolo, strings, harp, and piano. Mm. 553–568 are rooted in her primary sonor-
ity, chord A, and mm. 569–578 add a pedal D. Near the end of this excerpt she accuses
God of punishing Jaufré for pretending to be a crusader when he was actually just
going in search of her. She sings this a cappella except over an ominous pedal tone
in the timpani (on the pitch B at m. 587, enhanced with low B and wave filters
applied in the live electronics). In the next line she charges God directly with petty jea-
lousy, and the percussion pedal tone moves to B-flat at m. 593, with high B-flat and
wind filters, and nervous oscillations between B-flat and A in the flutes. Her vocalism
is expanded to include both glissandi and speech, and at m. 578 she lashes out on an
undetermined ‘very high pitch’. Clémence channels all the fury of the rage aria and
cabaletta conventions she has inherited, adapted to Saariaho’s musical language.
Some differences in the vocal line may be attributed to tessitura adjustment (mm. 562–
565), and some could be interpreted as puntature (the high note in mm. 584, 590, and
594), but others produce completely different melodic contours and radically different
vocal ranges. In mm. 550–555 and 558–559 coloratura Clémence is not only flying
above the staff; her line starts high and descends, undulating back and forth; lyric Clém-
ence’s line is roughly the inverse, starting low and rising but only to the middle range.
Unlike the aria in Act III Scene 2, the versions of this aria also diverge at the sustained
high notes. In m. 561 coloratura Clémence decrescendos on a high B-flat, while lyric
Clémence sustains an A above middle C (see also m. 595 for a similar gesture); at
414 J. H. Calico
m. 569 the differential is less than an octave, but it is the difference between the high and
middle range, and this continues through m. 576, at which point the lines converge again.
These alterations seem calculated primarily to help Upshaw (and any other lyric soprano)
pace herself since the opera will conclude with yet another double-aria event.
But the question of characterisation remains: what does it mean for one version of
Clémence to rage like a coloratura and the other to rage like a lyric soprano? How
might that change an audience member’s perception of the character? Since the text-set-
tings remain the same (syllabic, with identical rhythms) there is no room for fioratura, but
range, colour, weight, and melodic contour can shape our perceptions. The roles associ-
ated with each Fach might incline us to hear coloratura Clémence as younger, less experi-
enced and more impetuous. Perhaps her heretical rage aria comes across as a tantrum, so
much jousting at windmills, confirming what might have seemed like youthful insecurity
and narcissism in Act II Scene 2. Lyric Clémence singing the same text may seem more
mature, better grounded and more introspective, her rage aria the searing realisation
that profound piety cannot protect her from heartbreak. Perhaps her version of the Act
II Scene 2 aria reveals an awareness of her own faults, a kind of self-knowledge born of
inner strength. Yet coloratura Clémence seems to grow more like lyric Clémence in the
opera’s final scene, suggesting it is matter of trajectory rather than definition, and allowing
for greater character development over the course of the opera.
In the end, of course, the particularities of each individual voice will determine how
singers understand and perform the role of Clémence, and those distinctive features will
shape audience perception of the character. Twas ever thus. Vocal Fach is just one tool
for developing and interpreting operatic characterisation. Two versions of the same role
in a modern operatic masterpiece is not a problem to be solved so much as it is cause for
celebration, as it multiplies the number of singers who might envoice the character going
forward, and provides new possibilities for engaging with L’amour de loin.

Acknowledgements
The research for this article was made possible by a scholarship from the Paul Sacher Stiftung. I am
grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers for this journal as well as Kaija Saariaho, Dawn Upshaw,
Heidy Zimmermann, Wiebke Busch, Jaana M. Kuoppala, Susan Boynton, and Lila Meretzky for their
assistance.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor
Joy H. Calico is Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Musicology at the Blair School of Music, Vander-
bilt University. She is the author of two monographs, Brecht at the Opera (2008) and Arnold Schoen-
berg’s A Survivor from Warsaw in postwar Europe (2014), both from University of California Press.
Her current book project is a study of opera since Salome, and recent publications include articles
on operas by Olga Neuwirth, Helmut Lachenmann, and Kaija Saariaho. She is currently Outgoing
Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Musicological Society.
 Contemporary Music Review 415
Notes
[1] Two dissertations from 2008 warrant mention in this context. Lambright (2008) comprises
four original compositions as well as a study of Saariaho’s vocal works, with a focus on
L’amour de loin; and Oskala (2008). These projects predate the creation of the Saariaho
archive at the Paul Sacher Stiftung, so the authors did not have access to the materials dis-
cussed here.
[2] As of yet the collection does not include correspondence (except as letters appear intermit-
tently), so it is not always possible to recreate the collaborative processes through which the
stages preserved in these documents may have developed.
[3] For an insightful analysis of Lonh, see Lochhead (2015, 105–22).
[4] Yayoi Uno Everett interprets Clémence’s decision through the lens of Lacanian jouissance.
Everett (2013, 329–45).
[5] For analysis of another operatic convention in L’amour de loin, the lament, see Metzer (2009,
163–67).
[6] Saariaho included a note to the Paul Sacher Stiftung archivist, Heidy Zimmermann, in the file
that read ‘Dear Heidy, the first two papers here were the two most important documents for
me when composing L’amour de loin’.
[7] I am indebted to Jaana M. Kuoppala, University Helsinki, for translating the Finnish text into
English.
[8] This is also the way they were situated in Peter Sellars’ staging, which the author saw in Santa
Fe in 2002. See the DVD by the Finnish National Opera, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting, stage
direction by Peter Sellars, starring Gerald Finley, Dawn Upshaw, and Monica Groop (Sellars
2005).
[9] I discuss the basic chord on pages 351–53 in Calico (2016, 341–59).
[10] The electronics chart is in SKSA 4/11 Partitur (cp …) [1].
[11] Email from Saariaho to the author dated 6 March 2018, cited with permission.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Upshaw in a phone interview with the author on 7 February 2018.
[14] I am grateful to Wiebke Busch of Music Sales Classical Berlin for providing me with excerpts
from the 2005 ‘high tessitura’ score for research purposes, and to Lila Meretzky for her excel-
lent work with the musical examples (Saariaho 2005).
[15] Email from Saariaho to the author dated 6 March 2018.
[16] Upshaw in a phone interview with the author on 7 February 2018. This is relevant to the role
of Le Pèlerin as well. SKSA 10/11 [Partitur (Md. M. hss. Korr. u. a. Eintr.) von Akt 4 Mez-St]
contains a letter from Rosalind Mascall at Chester Music dated 9 October 2008, in which she
refers to the ossias for Le Pèlerin used in the 2001 Paris performance, and asks if Saariaho
would like to incorporate any or all of them into the score. Contrary to the revisions for Clém-
ence, those for the mezzo-soprano role consistently shift the tessitura higher.
[17] Email from Saariaho to the author dated 6 March 2018.
[18] The quotation is from an email from Saariaho to the author dated 6 March 2018.
[19] The quotation is from a follow-up email dated 7 March 2018.
[20] Email from Wiebke Busch to the author dated 9 April 2018. Magali de Prelle’s other roles as listed on
her website lean toward the light lyric Fach: http://www.magalideprelle.com/en/repertoire.html.
[21] I consulted the following reviews: Allison (n.d.); Christiansen (2009); Eddins (n.d.); Gardner
(2009); Grames (n.d.); Dingle (2012); McKinnon (2010, 57).
[22] Saariaho in an email to the author dated 6 March 2018.
[23] Grames review for Fanfare: http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=234684.
[24] Upshaw in a phone interview with the author on 7 February 2018; Saariaho in an email to the
author dated 6 March 2018.
[25] The definitive study of this phenomenon is Poriss (2009).
416 J. H. Calico
[26] The system was codified by Rudolf Kloiber in his Handbuch der Oper, now in its 14th edition,
although editions after the 9th (2002) do not include the list of roles for each Fach. The
English-language Wikipedia page for ‘Fach’ is essentially a translation of Kloiber’s entire
system from the 9th edition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fach (consulted 20 March 2018).
The role Fach and voice type should play in vocal pedagogy is a matter of considerable
concern (see especially the work of Sandra Cotton), but beyond the scope of this study.
[27] Libretto by Amin Maalouf, English translation by George Hall. CD liner notes, 56–57.
[28] Ibid., 100–03.

References
Archival and Other Primary Sources
Email correspondence with Kaija Saariaho, 6 and 7 March 2018.
Kaija Saariaho Collection. Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel, Switzerland.
Telephone interview with Dawn Upshaw, 7 February 2018.

Reviews
Allison, J. n.d. “Saariaho (L’)Amour de Loin: A Significant Opera Superbly Played and Performed.”
Gramophone: The World’s Best Classical Music Reviews. https://www.gramophone.co.uk/
review/saariaho-lamour-de-loin
Christiansen, R. 2009. “Saariaho: L’Amour de loin, CD review.” The Telegraph. https://www.
telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalcdreviews/5899837/Saariaho-LAmour-de-loin-CD-
review.html
Dingle, C. 2012. “Saariaho: L’amour de loin. Classical-music.com: The Official Website of BBC Music
Magazine.” http://www.classical-music.com/review/saariaho-l%E2%80%99amour-de-loin
Eddins, S. n.d. “Kent Nagano. Kaija Saariaho: L’Amour de loin.” AllMusic. https://www.allmusic.
com/album/kaija-saariaho-lamour-de-loin-mw0001413912
Gardner, C. 2009. “Kaija Saariaho: L’amour de loin. Review.” BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/
reviews/chzf/
Grames, R. E. n.d. “Kaija Saariaho: L’amour de loin / Nagano.” ArkivMusik: The Sources for Classical
Music. http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=234684
McKinnon, A. 2010. “Saariaho: L’Amour de loin.” Opera News 74/8, 57.

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