Karlheinz Stockhausen - Donnerstag aus Licht
Le Balcon - Paris, 2018
Maxime
Pascal, Benjamin Lazar, Damien Bigourdan, Safir Behloul, Léa
Trommenschlager, Elisa Chauvin, Damien Pass, Henri Deléger, Emmanuelle
Grach, Iris Zerdoud, Suzanne Meyer, Mathieu Adam, Jamil Attar
Opéra Comique, Salle Favart - 15 November 2018
Stockhausen
still remains a bit of a challenge (I can't imagine it ever being
anything else) and his Licht cycle of operas must surely be among some
of the most challenging of all. You need to have some belief in the
composer's underlying philosophy to play it convincingly or really get
anything out of it as a listener. The contemporary music ensemble Le Balcon are certainly believers, familiar with the language of the
avant-garde, but usually on a smaller scale and the Licht operas are on
another level entirely. Even just one part of it, Donnerstag aus Licht
is a huge undertaking.
It's difficult because Stockhausen
has very exacting, detailed and specific ideas about how the work
should be performed and presented. The Stockhausen Institute also
zealously safeguard the composer's legacy and aren't at all happy with
anyone who doesn't adhere to its guidelines in word or spirit, as was
evident from their rather sternly worded note offering certain
misgivings on the last production of Donnerstag at Basel in 2016. Le Balcon's
production, directed by Benjamin Lazar and conducted by Maxime Pascal
for the Opéra Comique in Paris actually takes more liberties with
personal interpretation, but make a much more convincing case that the
true message of Donnerstag is not so much in the narrative as in the
music.
You can have a synopsis sitting in front of you
and even have a working familiarity with the work from the previous
Basel production which played out at least to the letter of the work,
but Act I of this Paris production is still extraordinarily challenging
and difficult to follow. Michael's childhood, mirroring some of the
composer's own family experiences, shouldn't be that difficult to
follow, even though Stockhausen has three characters playing each of the
three main roles; as a singer, a musical instrument and a dancer.
Michael for example is represented by a tenor singer, a trumpet player
and a dancer.
Having an instrument double or a dance double is now a common enough feature employed at
least by some modern directors for other operas - although never both -
but Stockhausen has other reasons for such divisions. There's the
significant use of the trinity that represents different aspects of a
complex personality as well as approaches the subject from different
time periods. Lazar however doesn't try to make this any easier to
follow (and even switches to a second tenor Michael in Act III), but
with a back screen projection of a child writing in Act I there is some
indication that Michael may be hugely talented but at this stage is
still learning his craft, drawing from personal experience and
translating it into words and music. At this stage however, the music
is not powerful enough to defeat the forces of father/Luzifer's
darkness, and it only develops with the extraterrestrial gift from
Mondeva (Moon-Eve).
Act I is a struggle, but by Act II it
all starts to make sense as Stockhausen takes his ideas of opera in a
new direction and beyond its narrative limitations by having no
conventional singing at all. Words are no longer needed, music finds
its own expression and universal language as Michael travels around the
globe to bring his message to the world. Again, the overarching
narrative idea is kept simple - the image of a child spinning a globe
instead of literal depictions of situations in Cologne, New York, Japan,
Bali, India, Central Africa and Jerusalem - but the real meaning is
contained in the music, *IS* the music. In Act II it's Michael's
trumpet that defeats Luzifer's trombone much more convincingly in a
stunningly staged battle scene.
The visual impact is
important also, again more important than the narrative, making use of
symbols and lights, symbols written in light - but it's in the music
that the work gets it truest musical expression and that this production
is most successful. The quality of the musical performance is
extraordinary and to make sure that you get it and feel its full impact,
it's spread all around the Salle Favart auditorium with electronic
sounds, with those strange clicking noises that Stockhausen enumerates
and in the huge choral arrangements that come at you from all
directions. It's not so much putting the audience in the opera as
opening up the music for you to experience it in all its beauty,
literally filling your world with music to the extent that you forget
that it's "difficult" and find yourself enveloped in a new language that
is speaking directly to you.
This evidently is the gift
that Stockhausen believes he/Michael has to offer the world and Le
Balcon marshall all their forces in collaboration with other like-minded
musicians and creatives to make this an orchestral, choral and
theatrical tour-de-force. Act III's festival for Michael's homecoming
was accordingly utterly astounding, truly making Stockhausen's music
speak, sounding like nothing earthly. The impact of the visuals was
just as impressive, not needing to be as descriptive as the Basel
production was perhaps a little inclined to be, but ensuring instead
that the audience's attention was riveted towards the music and towards
the musicians, who appropriately are all prominently arranged across the
stage for the almost overwhelming final Act.
A rarely
performed opera, the Opéra Comique's 2018 production of Donnerstag aus
Licht was created for just three performances, so this was always going
to be a special event and indeed it proved to be an experience that
would be impossible to replicate in any other way. Le Balcon made sure
that their production in the just about perfect environment of the Opéra
Comique's Salle Favart theatre not only lived up to expectations, but
delivered what is likely to be considered as one of the major events of
the current opera season. Stockhausen's gift to the world has reached
Paris, the truth of its message delivered and it was enthusiastically received.
Links: Opéra Comique
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Donnerstag aus Licht
Theater Basel, 2016
Titus Engel, Lydia Steier, Peter Tantsits, Anu Komsi, Michael Leibundgut, Rolf Romei, Paul Hübner, Emmanuelle Grach, Merve Kazokoğlu, Evelyn Angela Gugolz, Stephen Menotti, Eric Lamb, Ansi Verwey, David Dias da Silva, Markus Forrer, Romain Chaumont, Emilie Chabrol
Sonostream - 1 October 2016
In the world of contemporary music, there are still few compositions that are more formidable, challenging and controversial as those of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Whether it's his 'Helicopter String Quartet' to be played by four musicians on separate helicopters, 'Gruppen', his work for three orchestras or his various experiments and innovations with tape recordings and electronics, there are few modern composers who have stretched musical boundaries quite so far.
It's not surprising then that Stockhausen's major opera work Licht, written between 1977 and 2003, is also one that pushes the art form to its limits. A series of seven operas, one for each day of the week, adding up to about 29 hours of music, it's not surprising that Licht (Light) isn't performed more often, even in its individual day components. It's a major event then when a segment of Licht is performed and Theater Basel's production of Donnerstag aus Licht (Thursday from Light), first performed at La Scala in Milan in 1981, is the only full performance there has been of this work in the last 30 years.
It's no easy matter then to summarise what Licht, or even Donnerstag aus Licht is all about. It's certainly possible to describe what takes place in Donnerstag on a narrative level, but the musical element (which is far from conventional), the autobiographical elements (which appear strange and eccentric to say the least), and the spiritual element (which is a level that is intended to run through everything else, musical, narrative and autobiographical), are all wrapped up in religious symbolism and a great deal of narrative and musical symbolism that Stockhausen has developed for himself.
To try and describe it as simply as possible however, Donnerstag aus Licht describes the early childhood of Michael, a spiritual being or angel who has been born in the body of a man with the intention of growing up to be the saviour of mankind. That salvation will be through the gift of music. As the final lines of Donnerstag describe it, Michael says his purpose is "to bring celestial music to humans and human music to the celestial beings, so that humanity may listen to GOD and GOD may hear his children." Michael's ascension to this messianic role is however not an easy one and he is tormented in his progress by Lucifer, who despises mankind and is full of disgust that Michael has taken on the form of one of these low creatures.
Michael's troubled childhood in Act I is not that far removed from Stockhausen's own, his mother - who takes on a symbolic form as Moon-Eve, while his father is to some extent aligned with Lucifer - is incarcerated in an institution for mental illness after her husband accuses her of having an affair. Confined to an asylum himself, Michael however receives a vision that tells him he is a celestial being who is to be the saviour of mankind, providing spiritual nourishment through his music (a belief that would come to be another part of Stockhausen's increasingly eccentric personality in later life).
In the entirely musical Act II of Donnerstag aus Licht, Michael assumes his role of saviour in a three-form incarnation, one as a tenor singer (Peter Tantsits), one as a trumpeter (who does all the 'singing' for this Act), one as a dancer (there are three-part Evas and three-part Lucifers as well). He undertakes visitations to major centres around the Earth; to Cologne, to New York, Japan, Bali, India, Central Africa and Jerusalem. His appearances heralding his Mission are followed with his trials of Mockery, Crucifixion and ultimately Ascension. Act III sees Michael's homecoming, a return to his celestial residence. Worshipped by choirs and greeted by Eve, Michael performs a ritual of Light with plants. It's here that Lucifer makes his strongest play to turn Michael away from his mission in a fight and a bitter exchange, but Michael resists.
Quite how seriously you are supposed to take this is not really open to question; you're supposed to take it very seriously indeed. Theater Basel were even obliged to publish a statement from the Stockhausen Institute that largely approved of the performance of this major work by the composer, but expressed grave reservations that the tone was darker than the composer would have liked, that it was too earth-bound with not enough emphasis on the 'light' that embodies the spiritual side of the work. It's a very stiff and humourless statement and unnecessarily restrictive and intolerant of any idea of interpretation.
Lydia Steier's direction for Theater Basel does however stick closely to the detailed descriptions and copious notes that Stockhausen lays out for the presentation of Donnerstag aus Licht, as well as for the musical delivery, complete with its precise indications and enumeration of noises, clicks, syllables, symbols and gestures that are as significant a part of the score and the singing as any conventional instrumentation. The production even opens with a Thursday Greeting in the lobby of the Theater Basel before the start of the main performance, humorously performed here with Titus Engel and a small band dressed in 70s' outfits and wigs puffing away on cigarettes between, and it closes outside the theatre with a Trumpet Farewell after the performance.
Steier takes much of the actual opera at face value, although she does attempt to tie it to a more conventional reality than the high-flown ideals of the Stockhausen Institute might have liked. Michael's journey around the globe in Act II seems to take place here from within his own mind while in the asylum, his mission an attempt to re-establish contact with his catatonic mother. There's a bit of humour as the trumpeter Michael destroys Godzilla at the second station in Japan, but apparently there's little room for either interpretation or humour in Stockhausen's self-important vision of himself as a cosmic musical saviour. All the grandeur of the piece is there however, particularly in Act III's choirs and battle with Lucifer.
What the Basel production does manage to achieve then is the sense of Licht as a real operatic event. Evidently the streamed version is a very different experience to being present at the actual event, but the sense of this being an opportunity to experience a rare work of genuine interest and significance, and share it with the world is commendable. Barbara Ehnes's set design is impressive in its efforts to make the complex musical lines, vocal lines, and multiple levels of Donnerstag aus Licht easy to follow. A rotating stage allows the work to flow beautifully around a tower that is used for back projections and as a window into Michael's mind and scenes from his childhood. Whatever the merits of Stockhausen's epic work, at the very least you have the opportunity to see that vision staged and it's hard not to be impressed either with the ambition of the work or its execution here.
Links: Theater Basel, Sonostream
