L'amour de loin

Composed to a libretto by Amin Maalouf and premiered at Salzburg in 2000 in a production by Peter Sellars, L'amour de loin was Kaija Saariaho's first opera. A reinterpretation of La vida breve, a narrative poem by the Medieval troubadour Jaufre Rudel, L'amour de loin tackles a number of highly topical themes: love from afar, the virtuality of ideal love and relations between East and West. The sensibilities and backgrounds of both Maalouf, a Lebanese-French author and journalist also living in Paris, and Saariaho-both voluntary exiles - brought them together to collarborate to turn a seemingly simple story into a complex story very simply told. On this spectacular new surround-sound recording, Kent Nagano leads the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and a trio of exceptional soloists.