Stockhausen - Donnerstag aus Licht (Basel, 2016)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Donnerstag aus Licht

Theater Basel, 2016

Titus Engel, Lydia Steier, Peter Tantsits, Anu Komsi, Michael Leibundgut, Rolf Romei, Paul Hübner, Emmanuelle Grach, Merve Kazokoğlu, Evelyn Angela Gugolz, Stephen Menotti, Eric Lamb, Ansi Verwey, David Dias da Silva, Markus Forrer, Romain Chaumont, Emilie Chabrol

Sonostream - 1 October 2016

In the world of contemporary music, there are still few compositions that are more formidable, challenging and controversial as those of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Whether it's his 'Helicopter String Quartet' to be played by four musicians on separate helicopters, 'Gruppen', his work for three orchestras or his various experiments and innovations with tape recordings and electronics, there are few modern composers who have stretched musical boundaries quite so far.

It's not surprising then that Stockhausen's major opera work Licht, written between 1977 and 2003, is also one that pushes the art form to its limits. A series of seven operas, one for each day of the week, adding up to about 29 hours of music, it's not surprising that Licht (Light) isn't performed more often, even in its individual day components. It's a major event then when a segment of Licht is performed and Theater Basel's production of Donnerstag aus Licht (Thursday from Light), first performed at La Scala in Milan in 1981, is the only full performance there has been of this work in the last 30 years.

It's no easy matter then to summarise what Licht, or even Donnerstag aus Licht is all about. It's certainly possible to describe what takes place in Donnerstag on a narrative level, but the musical element (which is far from conventional), the autobiographical elements (which appear strange and eccentric to say the least), and the spiritual element (which is a level that is intended to run through everything else, musical, narrative and autobiographical), are all wrapped up in religious symbolism and a great deal of narrative and musical symbolism that Stockhausen has developed for himself.

To try and describe it as simply as possible however, Donnerstag aus Licht describes the early childhood of Michael, a spiritual being or angel who has been born in the body of a man with the intention of growing up to be the saviour of mankind. That salvation will be through the gift of music. As the final lines of Donnerstag describe it, Michael says his purpose is "to bring celestial music to humans and human music to the celestial beings, so that humanity may listen to GOD and GOD may hear his children." Michael's ascension to this messianic role is however not an easy one and he is tormented in his progress by Lucifer, who despises mankind and is full of disgust that Michael has taken on the form of one of these low creatures.

Michael's troubled childhood in Act I is not that far removed from Stockhausen's own, his mother - who takes on a symbolic form as Moon-Eve, while his father is to some extent aligned with Lucifer - is incarcerated in an institution for mental illness after her husband accuses her of having an affair. Confined to an asylum himself, Michael however receives a vision that tells him he is a celestial being who is to be the saviour of mankind, providing spiritual nourishment through his music (a belief that would come to be another part of Stockhausen's increasingly eccentric personality in later life).

In the entirely musical Act II of Donnerstag aus Licht, Michael assumes his role of saviour in a three-form incarnation, one as a tenor singer (Peter Tantsits), one as a trumpeter (who does all the 'singing' for this Act), one as a dancer (there are three-part Evas and three-part Lucifers as well). He undertakes visitations to major centres around the Earth; to Cologne, to New York, Japan, Bali, India, Central Africa and Jerusalem. His appearances heralding his Mission are followed with his trials of Mockery, Crucifixion and ultimately Ascension. Act III sees Michael's homecoming, a return to his celestial residence. Worshipped by choirs and greeted by Eve, Michael performs a ritual of Light with plants. It's here that Lucifer makes his strongest play to turn Michael away from his mission in a fight and a bitter exchange, but Michael resists.

Quite how seriously you are supposed to take this is not really open to question; you're supposed to take it very seriously indeed. Theater Basel were even obliged to publish a statement from the Stockhausen Institute that largely approved of the performance of this major work by the composer, but expressed grave reservations that the tone was darker than the composer would have liked, that it was too earth-bound with not enough emphasis on the 'light' that embodies the spiritual side of the work. It's a very stiff and humourless statement and unnecessarily restrictive and intolerant of any idea of interpretation.

Lydia Steier's direction for Theater Basel does however stick closely to the detailed descriptions and copious notes that Stockhausen lays out for the presentation of Donnerstag aus Licht, as well as for the musical delivery, complete with its precise indications and enumeration of noises, clicks, syllables, symbols and gestures that are as significant a part of the score and the singing as any conventional instrumentation. The production even opens with a Thursday Greeting in the lobby of the Theater Basel before the start of the main performance, humorously performed here with Titus Engel and a small band dressed in 70s' outfits and wigs puffing away on cigarettes between, and it closes outside the theatre with a Trumpet Farewell after the performance.

Steier takes much of the actual opera at face value, although she does attempt to tie it to a more conventional reality than the high-flown ideals of the Stockhausen Institute might have liked. Michael's journey around the globe in Act II seems to take place here from within his own mind while in the asylum, his mission an attempt to re-establish contact with his catatonic mother. There's a bit of humour as the trumpeter Michael destroys Godzilla at the second station in Japan, but apparently there's little room for either interpretation or humour in Stockhausen's self-important vision of himself as a cosmic musical saviour. All the grandeur of the piece is there however, particularly in Act III's choirs and battle with Lucifer.

What the Basel production does manage to achieve then is the sense of Licht as a real operatic event. Evidently the streamed version is a very different experience to being present at the actual event, but the sense of this being an opportunity to experience a rare work of genuine interest and significance, and share it with the world is commendable. Barbara Ehnes's set design is impressive in its efforts to make the complex musical lines, vocal lines, and multiple levels of Donnerstag aus Licht easy to follow. A rotating stage allows the work to flow beautifully around a tower that is used for back projections and as a window into Michael's mind and scenes from his childhood. Whatever the merits of Stockhausen's epic work, at the very least you have the opportunity to see that vision staged and it's hard not to be impressed either with the ambition of the work or its execution here.

Links: Theater Basel, Sonostream

Charpentier - Médée (Basel, 2015 - Webcast)

Marc-Antoine Charpentier - Médée

Theater Basel, 2015

Andrea Marcon, Nicolas Brieger, Magdalena Kožená, Anders J. Dahlin, Luca Tittoto, Meike Hartmann, Robin Adams, Silke Gäng, Yukie Sato, Jenny Högström, Regina Dahlen, Tiago Pinheiro de Olivieira, Daniel Issa, Ismael Arróniz Gónzales, Santiago Garzon

Culturebox - 21 January 2015
 
Compared to some other versions of the Medea story, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's musical arrangements and Thomas Corneille's libretto for Médée can seem somewhat dry and formal. Musically it's a little austere, the baroque instrumentation of plucked strings and theorbo not quite as expressive as you might find elsewhere in other versions of the work. Medea however relies on the shock of the climax, and if it takes a little time getting there, Charpentier's conclusion is up there with the best of them.

A lot of course depends on the staging, not that there have been many productions of this work since it was first performed in 1693, and just as much rests on the singer playing the part of Medea. Theater Basel's 2015 production may be updated to a more modern setting, but it retains the simplicity of line of Charpentier's score, and it relies heavily on the casting of Magdalena Kožená to supply all the fire that is needed to bring out the underlying darkness that the score itself barely hints at. And, largely, it succeeds.

The modern setting of Creon's Corinth here has something of the look of a Soviet dictatorship, albeit one that revels in the luxury of its own success and power. Assurance of that power is however, as we discover later, a fatal mistake where Medea is concerned. Creon however believes that an alliance between his daughter Creusa and Jason will consolidate his position, Jason having recently fled Thessaly looking for asylum. Jason is a warrior Creon can use, but it would not be in his interests to have a woman like his wife Medea in Corinth. She's the reason for their taking flight, the people of Thessaly troubled by her sorcery. Medea is therefore "asked to leave" by Creon, and, as we know, she takes terrible revenge for this, and for Jason's betrayal in leaving her and staying behind to marry Creusa.

The mechanics of laying out the history and the relationships between each of the figures isn't the most invigorating, Charpentier placing additional emphasis here on Medea forming an alliance with Oronte, who has been displaced from Creusa's affections by the arrival of Jason in the court of Corinth. There are certainly a few dramatic touches to add some colour, often coming at the end of each of the acts. Director Nicholas Brieger tries to integrate some of these more baroque elements in a different way. Act II, for example, ends with an kind of cabaret show where the Italian singer wears a red wig, seemingly parodying the red-haired Medea, but it doesn't really follow the idea through.

Act III of Médée also ought to end with Medea enacting the familiar scene of her performing her sorcery over a cauldron, preparing the poison for the dress that she will present to Creusa. Charpentier and Corneille's version takes an even more colourful approach to this scene than usual, the stage directions specifying that the robe is "brought by flying demons", with Medea's state of mind given corporeal form in the shape of La Jealousie and La Vengeance, through them forging a direct link to Hell. The demons are there all right in the Basel staging, as are Jealousy and Vengeance, and the force of Medea's passions are all there in Kožená's singing, but it still doesn't quite reach the level of intensity found in Euripides or even Cherubini's opera version of this scene.

Sorcery plays its part most openly in Act IV, where Medea evades Creon's guards and drives him to madness when she turns them into beguiling women, but the implication that comes though most strongly in Corneille's libretto is that Medea's power is not her sorcery or her temperament. It's herself as a woman, and the underestimation of a woman's power by Creon. You're mistaken, she tells Creon in this scene, if you think your laws apply to me - "Souviens-toi, je suis Médée". Charpentier's woman scorned doesn't just condemn Creusa to a painful death in a poisoned robe, and doesn't just destroy Jason and her own children (as horrifying as this is alone), she destroys Creon, leaves his court in flames and pretty much leaves an obliterated Corinth in her wake. Now, that's one heck of a Medea.

If the baroque music isn't quite expressive or discordant enough to get this across in modern terms - though Andrea Marcon and the Basel orchestra certainly find plenty of colour and dynamic in the score - it's abundantly clear in the writing for the mezzo-soprano voice and in the delivery of it by Magdalena Kožená. I haven't heard a lot of Kožená over the last decade, but she demonstrates here that her voice is as powerful as it ever was. It's such a full and richly toned voice, strong and controlled right across the range, and utterly dramatic when it comes to those moments of Medea expressing the full extend of her fury. Anders J. Dahlin's haute-contre doesn't stand a chance against such a force, but his Jason is no wimp either, steely rather, capable of fine expression. There is a fine performance too from Meike Hartmann's Creusa (her death scene almost devastating) and a solid baritone Creon in Luca Tittoto.

Links: Culturebox

Handel - Ariodante

Georg Friedrich Handel - Ariodante

Theater Basel, 2012

Luca Tittoto, Franziska Gottwald, Maya Boog, Nikolay Borchev, Christiane Bassek, Agata Wilewska, Noel Hernández Lopez

Basel, Switzerland, 17 May 2012

This is obviously very much a personal view, but the best approach to staging Baroque opera seems to be to avoid the traditional approach at all costs. By all means stick to the traditional in terms of singing and period instrumentation - there really isn’t any alternative that works better - but in my experience, if you want to find a way to engage a modern audience and take them through the rather static drama and the rather stiff conventions of the repetitive da capo arias of Baroque opera, it helps if there is some inventiveness and an imaginative approach to the staging. Done straight, it can be difficult to lift or support the emotions that are being expressed at length in the long arias between the few moments of dramatic content - although this obviously depends on the composer and Handel is certainly an exception - but until relatively recently, it was supposed that hardly any Baroque opera, not even Handel, could ever be presented to a modern audience.

Thankfully, through painstaking research, restoration and training in period instruments from Baroque musical experts like William Christie, Jordi Savall, René Jacobs and Christophe Rousset, have proved that these works are of much more than just interest to music historians. Staging these works however is another matter altogether, and it often requires a radical approach. I’m thinking of Doris Dörrie’s Noh-theatre inspired direction of Handel’s Admeto, the Royal Opera House’s 2010 production of Steffani’s Niobe or, as when I last visited the Theater Basel, the WWII updating of Gluck’s Telemaco, but as seen with William Kentridge’s production of Die Zauberflöte, there are also a wider range of tools that can be at service to a director of personal vision and imagination. In my experience - again this is very much a personal viewpoint - it’s surprising just how successful some of the more radical presentations can be in this respect, the more abstract conceptual stage approach tapping into the emotional content over and above the dry recounting of the narrative of the libretto. I don’t think however that I’ve ever seen anything quite as ambitious as director Stefan Pucher and the Theater Basel’s wonderful willingness to experiment with Baroque opera through modern theatrical tools in their extraordinary 2012 production of Handel’s Ariodante.

When you speak about the stage direction here however, it’s necessary to consider the input from the innovative and visually impressive set design by Barbara Ehnes and the costumes of Annabelle Witt, as Stefan Pucher’s stage direction is truly a multimedia event. It’s through these different layers - along with the lighting, the use of projected images and even filmed sequences projected onto the sets - that the different layers of the music, the interaction of the characters and the heightened emotions are fully explored, much more so than the usual static delivery of the long arias. It’s not that all the necessary qualities aren’t already there in Handel’s exquisite compositions that capture the sentiments of its characters so well, but the staging simply allows an audience to see them visualised and respond to those qualities from an older operatic tradition that would otherwise seem almost unfathomable to anyone used to a more modern or traditional approach.

There’s nothing particularly inspiring about Ariodante’s late-eighth century Scottish setting, but theatre director Stefan Pucher - in his first opera production - clearly recognises that this ancient setting and the opera seria music that accompanies it is so far removed from what we are familiar with as to be practically abstract anyway. What is still relevant is the opera’s human story of love, jealousy, deception and revenge, and that was given utmost consideration. Act I then accordingly provided a tartan overload in the most extravagant of colours and weaves that, if they might not relate to any specific clan, certainly gave each of the figures their own strong definition. The tartan stretched to the brightly lit and visually impressive set designs that seems to create an enhanced 3-D effect through the still images, gothic paintings (by 17th century artist Otto Marseus van Schrieck), slow moving projections and lighting effects on the foreground screens, while the singing platform was set back on a revolving stage within a wide inverted cross. The sets inside were rather minimal, with a few eccentric touches in keeping with the Schrieck imagery such as giant bugs and slugs in an orange room in Act 1, but the frequent refreshing of the set from scene to scene all contributed to keep attention from flagging.

Even this would eventually have become tiresome over the course of the whole opera, but the designers also managed to find a distinct visual look for each of the subsequent two acts, if it was never a look that related naturalistically to any location specified in the libretto. A kick-boxing match standing-in for the battle between Polinesso and Ariodante on the jousting grounds was perhaps the strangest sight in Act III. Showing that there was a complete understanding of the structure of the works however and the necessary impact that was written into the chorus and ballet finales of each of the acts, the director pulled out all the stops at these points, inviting the audience to sing along to ‘Sì godete al vostro amor’ from music sheets handed out to the audience when entering the theatre (a surprisingly invigorating experience), and using filmed outdoor sequences featuring the cast, which was also extremely effective in suggesting the depths of Ginevra’s madness and inner turmoil at the end of Act II. More than just being visually stunning, the whole multimedia experience encompassed the tone and the intent of the music score, as well as drawing in the viewer and involving them fully in the experience. It made the production - the finest I think I’ve seen during the 2011-12 season - absolutely riveting.

It was not so riveting however that attention wouldn’t occasionally be drawn to the wonderful playing of this magnificent opera on period instruments by the La Cetra Barockorchester Basel under the direction of Andrea Marcon. Even they were visually integrated into the spectacle, placed on a platform that would rise and sink at the start and end of each act like an old-fashioned cinema organist, allowing the music to take centre stage where appropriate. Just as importantly, there was full attention given to the direction of the performers, who were never allowed to become just singing props that fitted into the overall package, and with the kind of singing we were hearing here, there was even less likelihood of them being overwhelmed by the spectacle. 

Mezzo-soprano Franziska Gottwald demonstrated a breathtaking range and facility for the demanding arias assigned to Ariodante, and was particularly impressive in Act II’s ‘Scherza infida’. Maya Boog however was just as impressive as Ginevra, handling the arias with aplomb, but also acting with genuine emotional and dramatic conviction throughout. There were however no weak elements in the casting which also included Agata Wilewska as Dalinda, Luca Tittoto as the King, Nikolay Borchev as Lurciano and Christiane Bassek as a disturbingly moustachioed, long-haired villain Polinesso, and Noel Hernández Lopez as Odoardo.

Gluck - Telemaco, ossia L’isola di Circe

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Telemaco, ossia L’isola di Circe

Theater Basel

Anu Tali, Tobias Kratzer, Freiburger Barockorchester, Tomasz Zagorski, David DQ Lee, Agneta Eichenholz, Solenn’ Lananant-Linke, Maya Boog, Christopher Bolduc

Basel, Switzerland - 24 June 2011

Gluck’s Telemaco, ossia L’isola di Circe (Telemachus, or Circe’s Island, 1765) comes at an interesting point in the composer’s career that has historical significance as well as great musical interest for its place in the opera repertoire. Written during his Italian period, while the composer was still forming his ideas for the reform of opera, Telemaco (dramma per musica in two acts) sits between two important operas (Orfeo ed Eurydice and Alceste) that – in their later French revisions at least – would transform opera, taking it away from empty stylisations and displays of vocal virtuosity towards a more dramatic form of opera as we know it today. The groundwork towards this reform can already be clearly seen in the lesser-known Telemaco.

Even though it still adheres largely to the opera seria form, with drama played out in semi-recitative and fluid continuo (with no harpsichord), the traditional longer arias express the emotions felt with some repetition, but there is nonetheless a restrained simplicity to the arrangements and a clear focus on the drama, with no unnecessary da capo adornments. Most of all however, there is a sense in Telemaco of the wonderful humanism that Gluck is able to find in the human drama unfolding in this particular episode of Homer’s Odyssey and in how he brings it out through the music with a naturalness and fluidity. That’s wonderfully apparent in the playing of the Freiburger Barockorchester conducted by Anu Tali (a rarity seeing a female conductor in the pit) at this production for the Theatre Basel in Switzerland.

Tobias Kratzer’s staging for this production boldly went for a few modernising reforms of its own, seeing Odysseus as a WWII fighter pilot who has been brought down and is now held captive with his crew by Circe on a tropical Pacific island. The opening scene where Penelope receives and rejects her suitors in a late 1940s drawing room in Ithaca, Odysseus having been missing for six years, is then violently transformed into a jungle, vines bursting through the walls as Telemachus vows to go in search of his father and bring him home. Played as a dual role, Penelope quick-changes into Circe, the madame of an Asian brothel, Penelope’s ladies in waiting dropping their knitting and stripping down to sirens in slips that hold Odysseus and his men in their power.

Quite what the intentions were in the modernisation, in closely relating the two worlds and in the division of Penelope/Circe is difficult to judge (this is a very rare opera and I can find no recording of it in existence, or even an English synopsis of the original libretto – although the subject is a familiar mythological one, done many times in opera), but it certainly creates an interesting contrast to consider. What is less in doubt however is the ability of the music and the singing to draw the human drama out of the story.

As Odysseus, Tomasz Zagorski was a strong and commanding tenor, with clear Italian diction. In the alto-castrato role of Telemachus, Canadian countertenor David DQ Lee came into form wonderfully in Act II during his vision of the death of Penelope, bringing out the full extent of the nature of his character and his conflicted feelings. Agneta Eichenholz was a little inconsistent as Penelope and Circe, but the dual-role is clearly a challenging one. The heart of the opera however would seem to lie in the character of Asteria and in her relationship with Telemachus. It’s in her transformation from a nymph through her love for the son of Odysseus, and coming to be recognised as a sister by Merione that the most powerful and human moments are expressed in the opera, and Maya Boog captured that wonderfully, particularly in her heartbreaking Act II aria, but it was also evident in the fine ensemble work of the cast and the chorus as a whole.

Composed as a commission for the Hapsburg monarch and Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II and his wife Maria Josepha of Bavaria, who had just come to power after the reign of his mother Maria Teresa and attempt to usher in modernising reforms, there are evidently parallels and guiding principles brought out in Gluck’s Telemaco (much in the way Mozart opera seria La Clemenza di Tito was written for Leopold II in 1791), but regardless of the setting in antiquity, in the time of Joseph II, or in post-WWII, the qualities and strengths of this rare opera are timeless and still relevant, as is Gluck’s prototypic al vision of the modern dramatic opera.