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L'Amour de Loin. Metropolitan Opera. http://www.metopera.org/Season/2016-17-Season/amour-de-loin-saariaho-tickets/. Accessed on December 7, 2016. 

Listen to this historic broadcast by clicking the "Listen Live" button at the top of this webpage or by tuning your radio to 89.5 FM on Saturday, December 10, starting at noon, on the Toll Brothers Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network.  

L'Amour de Loin by Finnish-born composer Kaija Saariaho is no ordinary opera, even though its themes of love and death are standard operatic fare. The work is unusual for a couple of reasons: its subject matter and its composer.

The opera is based on the life of a historical figure from the middle ages, troubadour and prince Jaufre Rudel, and his pursuit of the distant love, which gives the opera its name. According to his fictionalized biography, Jaufre was inspired to go on a crusade after hearing about the beauty of a noblewoman from Tripoli named Hodierna. He set off to find his "far off love," became ill on the journey, and died in Hodierna's arms.

Composer Kaija Saariaho is only the second woman to have an opera staged by the Metropolitan Opera. The first was Ethel Smyth, composer of Der Wald, performed at the Met in 1903. She was intrigued by Jaufre's story, and saw its potential. “A simple story, but full of meaning,” Saariaho said in an interview, “and a lot of place for music also.”

Conductor Susanna Mälkki, only the fourth woman to direct the Met orchestra, says there's something unique about Saariaho's compositional voice. “Her language is unlike any other music language of any other composer," Mälkki said in an interview with NPR. "I don't actually know how she does it, because we are really swept on to a mysterious world of the sounds."