Stockhausen - Montag aus Licht (Paris, 2025)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Montag aus Licht

Le Balcon, 2025

Maxime Pascal, Silvia Costa, Michiko Takahashi, Marie Picaut, Clara Barbier Serrano, Josué Miranda, Safir Behloul, Ryan Veillet, Florent Baffi, Elio Massignat, Iris Zerdoud, Joséphine Besançon, Alice Caubit, Pia Davila, Alphonse Cemin Claire Luquiens, Bianca Chillemi, Sarah Kim, Alain Muller, Haga Ratovo, Chae Um Kim, Akino Kamiya, Mathieu Adam

Philharmonie de Paris, - 29th November 2025

As one of the most ambitious works in the history of opera - ambitious to the point of parts of it being virtually unstageable - totalling approximately 29 hours over seven operas, the specialist contemporary music company Le Balcon nonetheless continue undaunted by the challenge of producing the entire seven day cycle of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Licht, a work that "attempts to recreate the world through the existence, union and confrontation of three angels: Michael, Eva and Lucifer". Not necessarily in order of composition or by day of the week, the company have already undertaken productions of Donnerstag (Sunday), Samstag (Saturday), Dienstag (Tuesday) and Freitag (Friday) one year at a time, each opera bringing their own unique character and presenting different musical and theatrical challenges. This year, after excerpts were performed first at Lille, the company presented - for one night only - a fully staged production of Montag aus Licht (Monday from Light) at the Philharmonie in Paris.

As the opening first day of the seven day cycle, Montag serves a specific function distinct from the unions and conflicts that take place between Eva, Michael and Lucifer over much of the remainder of the Licht cycle. Montag is dedicated to Eve (Colour: Green, Celestial body: Moon, Spiritual Qualities: Ceremony and Magic), the mother of humanity, and as such it does have something of a ritualistic ceremonial quality. All of the Licht operas have ritualistic elements to some extent, but this one is more celebratory and perhaps even more accessible than the more experimental and eccentric episodes in the subsequent parts of the complete work. But it's all relative and even though less narrative driven, Montag aus Licht has its share of eccentricities, particularly in the opening scenes of the first Act. Freitag is going to be hard to beat on that front, but there is unquestionably more and stranger yet to come in the remaining sections.

It's perhaps best to see Montag as an introduction into the world of Licht, since essentially it does deal with the creation of humanity over which the battle between Lucifer and Michael plays out in the following 'days', introducing an architectural musical structure, themes and motifs. With those figures largely absent from the first opera, the focus is then on the central figure of Eve, who gives birth to humanity, the seven days of the week - and in essence the seven days of the opera Licht - in an elaborate evocation of mood, ceremony and celebration. But even that foundational event is not as straightforward as it sounds. If Act I seems bizarre and silly (your mileage with Stockhausen's humour and pomposity may vary) it's only because the Eve's first birthing doesn't work out terribly well, producing semi-human, semi-animal hybrids and seven dwarfs. After an hour and a half of the first Act parturition, the enterprise is deemed a failure and Lucifer comes out and orders everyone back inside and start over again.

Act II by contrast is a work of absolute transcendental beauty. In most conventional operas the combination and cross-pollination of words, music, drama, singing and performance is essential to create the magical alchemy of opera, but Stockhausen has his own unique voice and recipe for opera and Act II of Licht is the perfect example of how effective his approach can be in bringing all the elements together to create something totally unique and otherworldly. Narrative is not important here - there are few words spoken or sung - but rather the essence of what takes place in Act II (Eve's fertilisation and second birthing) is expressed in the beautiful polyphonic music written for synthesisers, piano, flute and basset horns combining with lighting, staging, ritual movements, noises and singing with huge choral resources. 

Again with Stockhausen, it's an all-encompassing surround-sound theatrical experience, with a green illuminated girl's chorus descending from the back and sides of the hall to the stage and child boy singers on stage representing the seven days, the musicians - apart from the synthesiser players - on stage as key figures in the drama. Act III then expands on the growth of humanity, as the children of Eve take on new characteristics under the influence of a flute player called Ave playing seductive music to capture and abduct them. The children grow up, transform into birds and have their own children, the opera taking on the expansive nature of this in its progress.

As I've suggested, not only does Stockhausen present Montag as the introductory opera that heralds the first day and the struggle for what is to take place the rest of the 'week', but it is also the seed that sets out and gives birth to Licht as a cycle of seven operas. It's here that the characteristics of the days are defined, the nature of what will take place on each day in the cycle of seven operas, laying out a manifesto for one of the most - I'd be inclined to say the very most - ambitious creations in the history of opera. Montag is the cornerstone that lays out the whole scale and ambition of Stockhausen's vision; the philosophy and whole musical experimentation, the creative imagination, the invention, the whole deranged madness of an enterprise that is simply unimaginable that anyone else could conceive of it. The scale of Montag aus Licht alone is just breathtaking, resulting in an extraordinary performance that is quite unlike anything else.

And as such, even this single work is a formidable prospect for any single opera company to produce, let alone aim to undertake to complete the entire cycle and - and this is the crucial part - to do it justice and as close as possible to the intentions of the composer. If you've ever seen the stage directions for these operas (the previous reviews will give you a very small taste of what they involve), you'll realise just how difficult that is to achieve, and yet - to judge by those previous productions and the experience of Montag here - extraordinarily effective when done right. Unquestionably that's down to the choices made by Le Balcon's musical director Maxime Pascal and stage director Silvia Costa, to the virtuosity of the musicians and the professionalism and perfectionism of ensuring that every note and sung chorus makes its force fully felt.

Stockhausen's working methods necessitate a different way of thinking about opera performance, and it's incumbent on the audience to submit to the idea that much has to be felt rather than understood. Even so, the question must be posed whether such wild experimentation, such extravagance and adherence to the meticulously detailed and eccentric instructions laid out in the 'libretto' for each work is not just too ambitious, too experimental, too abstract and too over-elaborate, its scale too vast to be able to say anything meaningful about humanity and simultaneously too restrictive to allow personal interpretation. What is undeniable however is that Stockhausen himself is part of the necessary equation of the works; his life and ideas tied up inextricably in the content, in the form, and that must be retained in order for the works to achieve their full expression.

What is extraordinary about Montag aus Licht - and in how successful Le Balcon are at bringing those essential qualities across - is that warmth revealed in it that is perhaps not so evident elsewhere in Licht. It's rich in melody and its love for humanity and yet there is not a single lead singing role in the work or a true human figure who is anything more than a representative symbol. Eve is little more than an idea or a concept, defined as a green light that suffuses the work. In the original stage directions she is represented by a sculpture and little more than a birth canal, changed here to have a live pregnant woman at the top of a lighthouse tower giving birth to the world. She remains an idea or an ideal, the choice here not changing that, letting the music and singing reveal her love to seek to create a beautiful world, a humanity that is loving and harmonious. That is reflected mainly in the vast choral resources employed in the work, put on so spectacularly with amazing presence and ability by the choruses of young singers and the musicians.

Like all of the works presented in the Licht cycle so far, there are testing scenes and moments that drag over the almost five hours of the evening. Act III is very repetitive, there are scenes that are obscure and bizarre, musical touches that seem wilfully experimental and yet everything feels right and like it is contributing to something greater that will feed into and be explored more deeply in the days/operas to come. Nothing about this work is conventional, but that is the intention: to recreate and reimagine the world from scratch, from beginning to the end in a cycle of repetition, and envision a cosmic utopia where music will save us all. There is nothing else in opera that comes close to resembling it and indeed - the complete works of Wagner notwithstanding - nothing else that even comes close to the scale and ambition in its expansion of new musical ideas and its philosophical or mystical endeavour.

External links: Le Balcon, Philharmonie de Paris

Stockhausen - Freitag aus Licht (Lille, 2022)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Freitag aus Licht

Opéra de Lille, 2022

Maxime Pascal, Silvia Costa, Jenny Daviet, Halidou Nombre, Antoin HL Kessel, Charlotte Bletton, Iris Zerdoud, Sarah Kim, Haga Ratovo, Rosabel Huguet Dueñas, Suzanne Meyer, Jean-Baptiste Plumeau, Emmanuelle Monier, Pauline Nachman, Marie Picaut, Michiko Takahashi, Léa Trommenschlager, Ayako Yukawa, Frédéric Albou, Arthur Cady, Bertrand Bontoux, Jean-Christophe Brizard, David Colosio, Florent Martin, Colette Verdier, Marin Rayon, Alexis Mazars, Stéphane Poulet, Edgar Cemin, Arsène Jouet

Philharmonie de Paris streaming

With Freitag aus Licht, Le Balcon continue their work on what must surely be one of the most ambitious projects in opera; a complete cycle of the seven Licht operas composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen between 1977 and 2003. Totalling 29 hours of music and spectacle unlike anything else, this cycle has understandably never been produced in its entirety by the same opera company. Dealing with the eternal struggle to dominate Earth between good and evil, darkness and light, each of the operas has their own distinct character and challenges. Composed between 1991 and 1994 Freitag aus Licht ("Friday from Light") is the opera of temptation, but perhaps not entirely in the way you might think. It's associated with Venus and the colour orange, its spiritual features are knowledge and wisdom, and the temptation is indeed of the body, but also the temptation to change, to use the body as an instrument and turn one sound into another.

This is a consistent theme in Stockhausen's Licht, where the idea of opera itself and what it is capable of is also transformed with an unconventional libretto that turns words into sounds and action into gestures. In terms of plot then, Freitag can't be easily summarised, and even an outline description of the stage direction and actions is unconventional and impossible to subject to analysis or interpretation, much less consider how it fits into the Licht series as a whole, but Le Balcon do their utmost to make it as easy as possible to follow, breaking the work down to its composite parts. What follows might not make a lot of sense, but it will be fun trying to relate it, so here goes...

There are essentially three aspects to the work. The opening section the Weltraum is a suite of electronic music recorded by Stockhausen which, like the other works in Licht, serves as a greeting (Gruss) to the audience on entering the theatre, entering the world of Stockhausen. There are 12 'dance scenes' of dancers dressed as 'everyday objects' who undergo transformation by "hybridisation" over the course of the performance. The third element of the opera is the dramatic action - although 'drama' and 'action' are obviously unconventional - that takes place in the ongoing struggle between good and evil, where on Friday, good yields to temptation, but perhaps something comes of this unnatural union.

Le Balcon's production at Lille in 2022 doesn't make use of dancers, but rather sets up a kind of scientific laboratory were young children in white coats experiment with pairs of household objects and creatures that each make their entrance onto the stage to the electronic music backing. The first pair introduced is male and female, shown in cutaway models of human head and torso, which is then followed by dog and cat puppets, with other seemingly random objects making entrances at each significant stage of the opera.

Before then the dramatic action that relates the story of temptation plays out, Eve - a significant person in the triumvirate that is formed between her, Michael and Lucifer - encounters Lucifer in a new form, as Ludon. The exchange between them uses few recognisable words, Stockhausen moving beyond conventional language vocalisations into sounds clicks with Lufa and Elu (solo flute and basset horn) accompanying Eve. Ludon gives Eve a pearl in a clam shell. This heralds the entrance of a photocopying machine and typewriter in the dance section set at a different level on the stage.

Some time later Eve returns, wearing orange and accompanied by a Children's Orchestra dressed in white. She meets Ludon, who is accompanied by a children's choir dressed in black, again the orchestra and choir forming an extension of their language as they come to play together. Ludon offers his son Kaino in marriage, all of this taking place in slow ritualistic movements, exchanging words and sounds. The Consent section takes place after the entry of the racing car, pinball machine and leg with a football sock, and is celebrated with a rocket around the moon.

Part two of the opera commences with the consummation of Eve and Kaino on a boat, a scene ecstatically vocalised and scored by Stockhausen in a blend of swirling electronic drones, soft industrial clangs, bleeps and acoustic instruments. The union however is not a good one, is lamented by Michael and this causes an unnatural hybridisation between male and female humans and the cat and dog, followed by a hybridisation of photocopier and racing car. Meanwhile other objects make their entrance, a naked arm that is injected by syringe and an electric pencil sharpener. But what about the children? Well, all this leads to a war, a Kinderkrieg, yet another battle in the continuous war waged across many parts of Licht.

(Apparently a flying rhinoceros comes to the rescue of Ludon's children but I must have missed that with so much else going on).

The hybridisations continue between the footballer's leg and the pinball machine, there is the entrance of an ice-cream cone and woman's mouth, the rocket and syringe in naked arm come together, a violin and architect make an entrance, followed by a nest and a crow. As each of the hybridisations occur, other figures turn up on the stage as representations of the hybrid forms. Repentant, Eve begs Michael - the saviour as we have seen in previous days of Licht already presented (Donnerstag, Dienstag, Samstag) - for forgiveness.

So not exactly conventional or even comprehensible for the most part, but Freitag aus Licht is not the hard work that its formidable scale, ambition, reputation and description might suggest. It's not overly serious either, although I suspect Stockhausen took it very seriously indeed. You are free however to see it as you like and in the hands of musical director Maxime Pascal and director Silvia Costa, it's actually a very engaging work, inviting you into its deeply involving world, asking you to think differently or feel perhaps more than think. It's certainly grand, wholly operatic, more than a little bit bonkers, pushing the boundaries of the lyrical and theatrical art form.

I don't believe that the opera places any demands on you to follow and understand everything that is going on other than on the most basic level of good encountering evil and seeking to overcome temptation. Everything else is just part of the audiovisual experience, for you to feel and pick up things that don't fit into coherent language or rational action. Analysis is superfluous, as everything Stockhausen wants to express in this opera is up there on the stage - flying rhinoceros notwithstanding - so it's up to the viewer what they take from it. Bearing in mind of course that Freitag is just one part of the whole seven opera Licht cycle.

Stockhausen doesn't leave a lot of room for director interpretation, but Costa and Le Balcon have been very creative in how they choose to present the work which, as you can see, has some challenging and precisely detailed stage directions. They appear to try to remain as close as possible to the vital intent of the work, preserving its symmetry, its structure and the esoteric qualities that lie within its ritualistic movements. The hybridisation scenes may test one's patience with distorted cut-up high pitched electronically treated voices, but it's a striking opera performance and presentation. I'm sure they'll come up with something equally creative for the string quartet played from four helicopters in Mittwoch aus Licht ("Wednesday from Light").

Maxime Pascal and Le Balcon once again fully live up to the remarkable character of an extraordinary operatic experience. There is nothing else like Stockhausen's Licht and its originality is replicated yet again here in the spectacle of the stage production, in the musical performances and the singing. Jenny Daviet is extraordinary as an ethereal soaring Eve, interacting with the deep intonations of bass Halidou Nombre as Lucifer and baritone Antoin HL Kessel as Kaino. It demands much more than just conventional singing, as there are few recognisable words and a lot of vocalisations, all of which are notated in detail by the composer with accompanying movements and gestures.

From its Gruss to its Abscheid, Freitag aus Licht is intended as an enveloping surround theatrical experience, Stockhausen not only seeking to transform one sound into another, but to use sound that moves through space. The recording of the 2022 production in Lille, streamed via the Philharmonie de Paris (which is currently hosting the next section in the cycle Sonntag aus Licht), uses a binaural recording to attempt to capture the enveloping soundscape that Stockhausen seeks to place the audience within. It's an experience in itself.

External links: Philharmonie de Paris, Le Balcon