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

Eldar - Like Flesh (Lille, 2022)

Sivan Eldar - Like Flesh

Opéra de Lille, 2022

Maxime Pascal, Silvia Costa, Helena Rasker, William Dazeley, Juliette Allen, Adèle Carlier, Hélène Fauchère, Guilhem Terrail, Sean Clayton, René Ramos Premier, Florent Baffi

OperaVision - January 2022

The subject of ecological disaster seems to be a common theme in many contemporary operas (and in contemporary writing), and it's not a surprise that this is might be one of the pressing issues at the moment for many people. If opera is to be meaningful and relevant it needs to tackle the issues of the day, and if it is to endure it has to be adaptable and universal. Sivan Eldar's Like Flesh makes a very successful attempt to work with ideas that have endured for a long time, drawing influence from Ovid's Metamorphoses, not to mention using a medium that has been around for centuries - opera of course - while at the same time finding a way through the music to remain modern in its expression of the drama.

As a way of approaching the subject in the form of a chamber opera, the librettist Cordelia Lynn comes up with a very concise and meaningful way of expressing the dilemma (much more successfully I feel than Tom Coult's recent Violet) though just three characters. Not a word is wasted as the three characters represent different sides of the equation. The man is a forester concerned with making the most of the catastrophe in a world that is beginning to feel the consequences of climate change, but his idea of making the most is to make money out of it. The woman, his wife, feels a closer bond with nature and sadness at the loss of the richness that was once there. There is also a student, a scientist, who is observing the changes, wanting to find a way if not to reverse the damage - it's too late for that - to at least minimise its impact.

I say that there are three characters, but there is a fourth and that is the first voice we hear in the opera; the trees. The trees have been around a long time and have observed the changes that have occurred ever since man brought an axe into the forest for the first time (recognising the handle as "one of our own"). The voice of the forest is present throughout and in between the scenes, remembering "what the humans did next", but their voice is also seductive to the woman, who begins to show signs of not just becoming closer to nature, but being as one with nature in her transformation into a tree.

You could even say that there is a fifth character in the opera, but then you could say that the music is a distinct character in almost any opera. Here however, it does have a very important role and presence. Searching for a way of creating an approriate and effective sound world for the opera, seeing it as vitally important as a voice for Like Flesh, Sivar turned to the still important technicians of IRCAM for inspiration. The opera was developed using electronic sounds with the assistance of Augustin Muller, but the opera uses both acoustic and electronic playing, creating a voice that in a way represents the uneasy relationship between man and nature, although neither is solely associated solely with one type of sound.

In the hands of Le Balcon and the musical direction of Maxime Pascal, skilled practitioners of contemporary music with electronic effects who are notably also currently presenting a complete cycle of Stockhausen's epic Licht, the complexities and intricacies of Like Flesh are in safe hands. I daresay that the presentation is much more effective in a live environment, as speakers have been placed not just around the theatre in Lille, but also under the seats in order to place the audience entirely within the opera. Considering the intimate nature of the chamber operas arrangements and the sound effects, you can imagine that this would be hugely effective for this particular work in the theatre. For someone listening to a recording of the opera however, it does seem to rely too much on atmospheric drones and is not so musical.

The presentation is just another element and it's the combination and successful deployment of all the other elements that mark this out as a success - the opera notably winning the 202I FEDORA Prize for Opera. Primarily, I however I feel that a large part of why it works so well is down to the strength of the libretto; in its symbolism, its poetry and the concision in how it gets across its ideas. I was particularly impressed as I wasn't keen on Cordelia Lynn's previous libretto for Katie Mitchell's feminist revisionist take on 'The Tempest' with Purcell music as Miranda. Sivan mentions in one of the interviews that the love triangle is not just a metaphor for the destruction of the environment, but the destruction of the environment is also a metaphor for relationships and perhaps even sexual identity. I think this really does come across and contribute to the very human element of the work, rather than it being a preachy environmental catastrophe warning.

The singing puts these ideas across beautifully and with deep feeling. It's a small cast of only three principals and a chorus, and there may be a lot of recitative-like spoken singing in English, but there are fine performances all round from Helena Rasker as the Woman, William Dazeley as her husband, the Forester and Juliette Allen as the Student. The chorus too as the forest, play a huge role, as they should in keeping with the theme of the work, with good solo singing and fine harmonies that indeed present an seductive impression of peace and harmony.

The stage production is another vital component in the overall quality and success of this staging of the opera. It is just beautiful, making stunning use of projections created by Francesco D’Abbraccio, but also effective in the simple transformation scenes and in the movements of the actors and chorus. It all comes together, working with the music and the performances to get across the intent of the opera's important ecological message in a tremendously effective way.

Links: Le Balcon, OperaVision, Opéra de Lille

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 - Samstag aus Licht (Paris, 2019)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Samstag aus Licht

Le Balcon - Paris, 2019

Maxime Pascal, Damien Bigourdan, Damien Pass, Alphonse Cemin, Henri Deléger, François-Xavier Plancqueel, Mathieu Adam, Ayumi Taga

Philharmonie de Paris, 28 & 29 June 2019

Opera has evolved considerably as an artform over the last 400 years, partly due to its very nature of incorporating a wide range of disciplines, from poetry and writing to dancing and singing, dramatic theatre and spectacle, and evidently music. As each of those disciplines have developed over the centuries so too has opera incorporated this growth, and some of the greatest opera composers have been those that have embraced change and actually extended those disciplines further into new areas. At heart however what has remained important is the ability of those works to express something about humanity that relates to their own personal experience and vision and find a complete operatic expression for it.

Quite where Karlheinz Stockhausen fits into people's conception of great composers is undoubtedly a matter of taste and changing perceptions, but there can be little doubt that he pushed music into previously unimaginable zones like no-one else. In opera too he created one of the most extraordinary and original, not to mention challenging and controversial opera works ever written in the 29 hour long, 7-day opera cycle Licht, 'Light'. Evidently few have had the opportunity to see that work performed and staged in its entirety, but Maxime Pascal and Le Balcon took on that ambitious task on 2018, starting with a production of Donnerstag aus Licht, 'Thursday from Light'.

As you might expect from a radically experimental composer like Stockhausen no two works in the cycle are going to be alike and certainly Samstag takes a very different approach from the mysticism of Donnerstag with its comprehensive globe-spanning worldview of the battle between Good and Evil and, from the semi-autobiographical elements within, presumably a similar battle within Stockhausen himself. Written in 1984, the second work in the Licht cycle, Samstag serves the function of a day of transition, a liberation from one state of being to the next, the liberation of the soul from mortal restraints, which for Lucifer means the death of humanity. In one respect however Samstag aus Licht still very much adheres to the underlying philosophy that music can illuminate and save the world through its Light (Licht), specifically if you like through Stockhausen's music and his self-image as the Saviour of the Earth.

It's the predominance and importance of music and ritual as a liberating force that immediately strikes the listener and indicates the overall tone of Samstag aus Licht. Its opening fanfare of Luzifers-Gruss (Lucifer's Greeting), is followed by a long solo piano opening Luzifers-Traum (Lucifer's Dream) section. Having been resisted by Michael through the power of his music in Donnerstag, Lucifer - sung by bass Damien Pass - is of course not completely eradicated from Earth and his dreams take on form in music that soothes his wounds and fills him with strength again. Music likewise is very much a character in Samstag aus Licht as it was in Donnerstag aus Licht, and Stockhausen blurs the lines as to where one discipline ends and another begins in the expression of a character or even a theme.

The second scene in Samstag for example involves a black cat Kathinka who plays 24 pieces on the flute as a requiem for Lucifer (Kathinkas-Gesang als Luzifers-Requiem). The music is accompanied by singing into the flute in places, while six percussionists representing the six mortal senses ('thought' being the sixth sense) play 'magical' instruments. Damien Bigourdan and Maxime Pascal capture the fluid musical qualities and expression superbly for the Le Balcon production, visually representing the music and the ritualistic side of the unconventional requiem to Satan, the percussionists dispersed around the auditorium of the Philharmonie in Paris. Once the senses are liberated however, despite the requiem performed in his name, Lucifer proves to still be very much alive.

Part Three, Luzifers-Tanz (Lucifer's Dance), illustrates quite literally how different and strikingly original Stockhausen's approach to opera is in its utter disregard for convention, choosing rather to exploit its endless possibilities far beyond its normal range. Stockhausen refuses to accept any limits to expression (see the Helicopter String Quartet from Mittwoch aus Licht as another extreme example) in order to represent something that takes place on a higher cosmic level. The different sections of the orchestra are all directed to form the face of Lucifer piece by piece, building it up on sections musically with instructions from Lucifer himself.

That takes some imagination not only to stage but stage and play effectively in a way that summons up the necessary character and ritualistic aspect of this scene. It's superbly visualised by Nieto here with live projections overlaying the ranged players on the various levels of La Philharmonie moving to the twitches of eyebrows and rolling of eyes. Michael as a trumpet player challenges Lucifer but proves unable to set himself against the renewed force of evil. This is opera but very much not how anyone else does it.

So to follow that, the dance descends into a cacophony, the musicians protest and walk off the stage and the final part of Samstag, Luzifers-Abschied (Lucifer's Farewell) takes place in the nearest church. Here it's the Ëglise Saint-Jacques Saint Christophe de la Villette, where 13+13 bass and 13 tenor Franciscan monks sing St Francis of Assisi's 13 part Hymn to the Virtues with increasing intensity as they run around the church. After the ritual to banish the blasts of a row of diabolic trombonists, a caged wild bird is released and the monks smash 39 coconuts (no, really) on the steps outside the church in a solemn vow of purification. Bells, clacking of clogs, hammering of wood instruments, some organ, clapping and Gregorian-like chants; again full use is made of spacial surround to envelop the audience in the sound experience, bringing this extraordinary rarely performed work that is completely unlike anything else to a solemn but fervent and slightly manic conclusion.

Aside from the traditional opera characteristics of narrative, theatre and music, there is clearly much more to a performance of any of the works of the Licht cycle than that, which is of course why Stockhausen's innovation in his musical direction is so important. Maxime Pascal refers to Licht being Stockhausen's attempt to make the sound an invisible force and why the use of spacial dispersion of sound is important. The impact of that is quite noticeable when this is heard live with music and sounds bombarding you invisibly from all sides. It's something that takes more than just rationalisation or interpretation, it very much needs to be immersively experienced to be truly felt. Even watching it as a streamed recording it's clear that Samstag is an extraordinary work in a unique and absorbing cycle of operas.

Stockhausen doesn't appear to leave much room for reinterpretation of his work as there are precise instructions and an element of ritual throughout Licht, but the subjects themselves demand a personal response on the part of the creatives as much as the audience. Maxime Pascal and the Le Balcon are fortunately among the finest ensembles promoting new music and the championing of the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. With full-scale productions of Donnerstag and Samstag from the Licht cycle completed now, their dedication and fidelity to Stockhausen's monumental vision has so far proved to be impressive and revelatory. This is proving to be one of the most important opera projects of our time.

Links: Philharmonie de Paris Live, Le Balcon, Licht Paris

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

Fiszbein - Avenida de los Incas 3518 (Le Balcon 2012 - Webcast)

Fernando Fiszbein - Avenida de los Incas 3518

Le Balcon, 2012

Maxime Pascal, Damien Bigourdan, Cyril Costanzo, Pablo Ramos, Rodrigo Ferreira, Elise Chauvin, Florent Baffi, Basile Seck, Camille Merckx, Minino Garay

lebalcon.com

The method of expression and how it relates dramatically to the storytelling is not always clear in Fernando Fiszbein's Avenida de los Incas 3518, but it's an intricate short opera that is well-staged and performed in this 2012 recording, commissioned and performed by the specialist contemporary music ensemble Le Balcon.

I'm tempted to say that the work operates on a number of levels - and I'm sure musically it does - but that would be too much of a play on the setting of the work. The opera does indeed take place entirely within an apartment block on 3518, Avenida de los Incas, presumably in Buenos Aires. Visually, the staging by Damien Bigourdan successfully gives the work a vertical dimension with the use of projections, but there's a similar dynamic in the rises and plunges of the music score.

Structurally, Avenida de los Incas 3518 opens with a murmur of intercutting voices from the different apartments of the high-rise block, and it ends with a cacophonic orgy of screams of pleasure and of fear. The main body of the story is furthermore played out in flashback at the moment that three men in a lift plunge down an elevator shaft. Pablo, Diego and Nico have discovered a service elevator from old blueprints of the building and have been using it to intrude on their neighbours apartments. Mostly, it's to have fun, get high and play pranks by removing small objects and placing them in other places, but occasionally their incursions can even be beneficial, such as the time that Alma, living alone, got locked in her bathroom.

From the minor incidents related above, it's not immediately obvious that the narrative or the structure of this drama merits the attention it has been given musically, vocally and theatrically. Reflecting its setting, it's a slice-of-life drama with several domestic situations that interlink in the manner of filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu's 'Amores Perros'. Like Iñárritu's film, there's an effort made to see the relatively simple but melodramatic soap-opera situations as relating to something that has connections to and resonance in the grander scheme of the universe. Fiszbein even introduces an omniscient narrator half-way though who provides a recap for the audience in French, possibly for those who haven't followed the Spanish language libretto.

Fernando Fiszbein's ambitions are not quite so elaborate as those of the Mexican filmmaker. Perhaps it's the use of music, the language of opera, that allows the opera to be rather more modest in its range and thus more successful in how it represents the story. Opera music traditionally has the function of heightening and expressing emotional content, but here it's employed differently, actually downplaying issues that would feel somewhat overblown if they were merely dramatically represented and artificially interconnected. There's a sense that the tumbling notes, the dissonant interjections of brass and flute trills (and even a section played on typewriters) are an attempt more to capture the background cacophony of life and its little moments of colour that arise out of it.

Running only to a modest 45 minutes moreover, Avenida de los Incas 3518 never tests the viewer's patience either. The staging engages interest with the simple use of a screen that projects the ascent and descent of the lift though an identical arrangement of rooms, occasionally using some filmed footage for more elaborate sequences. Even its difficult modern musical language, which is played with beautiful precision by the Le Balcon ensemble, is accessible at this length, working as it does with the tone of the drama and the singing. The singing performances are all excellent, capturing all the colour of personality, location and life as it's lived on Avenida de los Incas 3518.

Links: Lebalcon.com