Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer who grew up in the world of male-dominated high modernism but broke away from it to forge her own identity, and became the first woman to have more than one work of hers performed at the Metropolitan Opera, has died at her home in Paris on Friday. she was 70
She was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2021, her publisher Chester Music said, confirming her death.
Ms. Saariaho brought new and often mysterious colors to classical music.
In Paris, where she settled permanently, she experimented with tape and live electronics, applying them to almost every form of classical music: works for solo instrument and small ensemble, as well as for symphony orchestra and opera. Over the years she has risen to the top of her craft, a slowly changing industry that has only in recent years taken steps to correct the gender imbalance in repertoire.
Her first opera L’Amour de Loin, which premiered at the Salzburg Festival in Austria in 2000 and was performed at the Met in 2016, won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Her latest foray into the genre, Innocence, debuted at France’s Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2021 and will make a guest appearance at the Met in the 2025-26 season.
When the Met joined the list of clients for the work, Ms. Saariaho in turn joined a select group of living composers to have a second opera performed by that house – and was the only woman to receive the honor.
Kaija Saariaho was born on October 14, 1952 in Helsinki. She studied there at the famous Sibelius Academy and was a pioneer of contemporary music, founding the group Open Ears with other young artists. She left to continue her education in Freiburg, Germany, where she attended summer courses in the modernist stronghold of Darmstadt. In 1982 she moved to Paris to complete her studies at IRCAM, the institute founded by Pierre Boulez.
A full obituary will be forthcoming.