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.
