Premiering at the 2021 Aix-en-Provence Festival, Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence is finally here, having already played London’s Royal Opera House, the Dutch National Opera and San Francisco Opera.

After this season at the Adelaide Festival, it will make its way to the Metropolitan Opera New York.

Taut and terrific, it’s easy to see why this production by Australian director Simon Stone is in such demand.

Innocence at the 2025 Adelaide Festival. Photo © Andrew Beveridge

Staged on a hyperrealist, two-storey set designed by Chloe Lamford, it unfolds like a Nordic noir, with a wedding party unravelling before our eyes as details of an earlier shooting at the venue are revealed.

As the set revolves, it becomes a liminal space where the present-day and the past co-exist.

Those thrilled by the seemingly impossible scene changes of Stone’s Thyestes – the directors last outing at the Adelaide Festival in 2018 – will be equally impressed by the way Lamford’s structure is transformed.

With each turn, it seamlessly transitions back and forth between the function centre and the international school where the massacre occurred. Later, it is entirely stripped of its contents to reveal blood on the walls.

The execution...