Stockhausen - Dienstag aus Licht (Paris, 2020)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Dienstag aus Licht

Le Balcon - Paris, 2020

Maxime Pascal, Richard Wilberforce, Damien Bigourdan, Nieto, Élise Chauvin, Léa Trommenschlager, Hubert Mayer, Damien Pass, Henri Deléger, Mathieu Adam, Sarah Kim

Philharmonie Live streaming, 24th October 2020

There is of course never anything conventional about Stockhausen's approach to music and, from what we've been able to see so far of this new cycle of his epic 7-day, almost 30 hour-long opera series Licht, undertaken over the last few years by Le Balcon (Donnerstag aus Licht, Samstag aus Licht), each section is not short of ideas and challenges. It goes without saying that this an ambitious work of opera like no other and the challenges are undoubtedly for an opera company to rise to the scale of Stockhausen's vision, the challenges of the singing and music and the often near-impossible stage directions. Performed in Paris in October 2020, the unique challenges of presenting Dienstag aus Licht ('Tuesday from Light'), were doubtlessly compounded it being performed during the height of the initial waves of the Covid pandemic, but Maxime Pascal, Le Balcon, director Damien Bigourdan and visual artist Nieto still managed to do full justice to this section of Stockhausen's operatic masterwork. 

First performed in Leipzig in 1993, Dienstag aus Licht indeed opens with one of Stockhausen's unconventional techniques inevitably rarely seen in opera, the Dienstags-Gruss (Tuesday’s Greeting) requiring not just one but two conductors to handle the compositional challenges of the score. I've seen it used since in Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, but of course Stockhausen has been here before in 1957 with his piece Gruppen for three orchestras with three conductors. Here it has particular relevance and necessity as the opening of Dienstag, since like much of the themes of the entire Licht cycle as a whole, it involves the eternal battle between the opposing forces of good and evil, with Michael on one side and Lucifer on the other.

And that is how they appear on the stage of the Philharmonie de Paris during the prelude of Tuesday's Greeting, the two pitched against each other in yet another struggle for dominance, light seeking to overcome darkness. On one side Michael's trumpets and celestial chorus are bathed in blue light, sending out blasts of goodness against the red lit deeper intoning of Lucifer's trumpets rejecting God, with voices whispering fragments of words and clicks that are spat out at the other side. Maxime Pascal conducting Lucifer's forces, Richard Wilberforce conducting Michael's separately across each other, follow Stockhausen's detailed directions with precision. A figure appears in the midst of this battle, appealing for calm; Eve, the third person in the triumvirate that Licht revolves around.

In Act I Michael and Lucifer appear on the stage, Lucifer challenging Michael to run the Jahreslauf, the Course of the Year. Visually this is presented as four walking-dancing-rotating-spinning figures moving at different speeds, representing time; one for the millennium, one for the century, one for the decade, and one for the year. Lucifer uses temptations to stop time, and Michael has to start it again using 'incentives'. One of those mentioned in the stage directions is a monkey in the sports car. We didn't quite get that, but there was nonetheless an effective best endeavour for all the situations. When the runners eventually succeed in making it to the year 2020, Lucifer accepts Michael as the winner, but he has another more difficult challenge to offer in the second Act.

Again, a ritualistic aspect is evident in the work, one that has been described by Stockhausen in detail in his directions, right down to the number of tongue clicks and trills uttered by the performers. With an orchestral accompaniment that consists of drums and percussion, flutes, a guitar, a harpsichord, three harmoniums and soprano saxophones, it sometimes feel like we have entered David Lynch's Black Lodge here, some disturbing alternate reality subject to unfamilar laws. If it doesn't feel quite as combative and awe-inspiring as the situations in some of the others days, Act I is definitely unique in its own way and a fascinating part of the whole. But there is a darker side to come.

The possibilities offered by CGI allows Stockhausen's vision for the second part of the opera 'Act II - Invasion - Explosion with Farewell' to be realised more effectively than anyone could ever have imagined, bringing the battlefield out into the auditorium. Fighter planes picked out in spotlights are shot down by laser-guided weapons to crash, burn and smolder on a vast wall of rock projected on the stage. One pilot is plucked from the wreckage by an enormous 3-D hand that appears out of an opening in the cliff face. All the while a synthetic sound drone underpins the menace, the whole thing having the look and feel of the opening of a Pink Floyd concert. The explosion that subsequently takes place as Lucifer and Michael take to the stage with their army of trombones and trumpets truly lives up to the billing, threatening chaos.

The battle eventually seems to collapse under its own weight, leaving a strange absence and air of expectation. This is filled with the arrival of the Synthi-Fou, who brings the opera to a conclusion in an orgy of planes crashing in a kaleidoscopic explosion of colour and light, while he/she plays out a barrage of synthesiser sounds. An ominous choral backing that seems to present a blend of haunting doom and celestial wonder vocalises the chaos that has been left behind. You can truly say - as with every other part of Stockhausen's Licht that Le Balcon have presented thus far - that you have never seen or heard anything quite like Dienstag aus Licht. It also lives up to the ambition of Stockhausen to take opera into another realm beyond music, singing and drama, into a sensory, participatory experience.

It would be ridiculous to review or rate this opera performance in a traditional manner. Stockhausen doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation in Licht, but if you are looking for as authentic an experience of this extraordinary work - rarely performed for obvious reasons - you can be sure that Maxime Pascal and Le Balcon's production lives up to the extraordinarily challenging standards of music and theatricality that Stockhausen's expansive epic presents. Stockhausen's work invites disciples who like to see his work treated reverentially, and Le Balcon do that here by performing the work with purpose and complete commitment. As they have done with previous sections Donnerstag and Samstag, and as they will no doubt do with the remaining four.

The next section of Licht to be tackled in this complete cycle by Le Balcon is Freitag aus Licht at Lille and Paris in November 2022. Having only seen Donnerstag aus Licht performed live, I hope I get the opportunity to see that or one or two of the remaining sections, and if they manage to keep up this standard of presentation, this cycle will undoubtedly be considered be one of the operatic achievements of the decade.

Links: Le Balcon - Licht, Philharmonie Live

Stockhausen - Donnerstag aus Licht (Paris, 2018)

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