[1][2] It received its world premiere on 3 July 2021 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, conducted by Susanna Mälkki and directed by Simon Stone.
[3] The opera tells the intertwined stories of a wedding in 2000s Helsinki and a school shooting ten years prior,[1][4] and has been described as a thriller.
[5][6] The opera, set in 21st century Helsinki, tells the intertwined stories of the wedding of Tuomas and Stela and a school shooting ten years prior.
Tereza, a waitress who was called to work the wedding at the last minute, overhears a conversation about Tuomas's brother; she is the mother of one of the shooting victims, Markéta, who appears throughout the opera as a ghost.
While all the characters at the wedding are cast as opera singers, the surviving students are all "musical actors", separating them into what Saariaho and Oksanen refer to as "the realm of memories".
Tuomas, however, explains that he feels personally responsible for the tragedy and unable to escape his past, and so decides to leave Stela.
Innocence received its premiere on 3 July 2021 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, with Susanna Mälkki conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, and directed by Simon Stone.