Salle Favart
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| Image: Vincent Pontet |
Michael (tenor) – Damien Bigourdan,
Safir Behloul
Michael (trumpet) – Henri Deléger
Michael (dancer) – Emmanuelle Grach
Eva (soprano) – Léa Trommenschlager,
Elise Chauvin
Eva (basset horn) – Iris Zerdoud
Eva (dancer) – Suzanne Meyer
Luzifer (bass) – Damien Pass
Luzifer (trombone) – Mathieu Adam
Luzifer (dancer) – Jamil Attar
Michael’s accompanist (piano) –
Alphonse Cemin
Swallow Clowns (clarinets) –
Alice Caubit, Ghislain Roffat
Two Youths (saxophones) –
Eléonore Brundell
Old Woman – Bernadette Le Saché
Messanger – Antoine Amariutei
Nurses – Maxime Morel, Alphonse
Cemin
Doctor – Simon Guidicelli
Child Michael – Ilion Thierrée
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| Luzifer bass (Damien Pass), Michael tenor (Damien Bigourdan) Image: Stéfan Brion |
What a year it has been for Karlheinz
Stockhausen. The ninety-year-old composer from Sirius seems in this, the year
of his ninetieth birthday celebrations, to be as strongly with us as ever. Berlin’s
annual Musikfest did him proud with four concerts, three of which I was privileged
to attend. (See here and here for reviews.) The Paris-based
orchestra Le Balcon has, under the direction of Maxime Pascal, launched a series
of his complete Licht operas,
starting here with the French premiere of Donnerstag
in a co-production between the Opéra Comique, Le Balcon, and the Opéra national
de Bordeaux. It is planned to reach its conclusion in 2024. On the evidence of
this performance – and indeed of Benjamin Lazar’s production – it will, from
beginning to end, prove an absolute must for anyone with a remotely serious
interest in opera.
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| Image: Vincent Pontet |
Donnerstag may come fourth in the seven days of
creation – and thus be expected take that place in a full ‘cycle’, if we must use
the confusing, circular term. It was written first, though (give or take a
single scene from Dienstag) and to my
mind benefits – at the very least, is done no harm – from being placed first
like this. At the opening of the treatment of Licht in his book on Stockhausen’s music, Robin Maconie writes: ‘As
the first completed opera of LICHT,
the day in which, drawing on his own life experiences, the composer lays out
his philosophical agenda for the entire week, Donnerstag aus LICHT is at once the most personal in its
declarations and the most troubling and controversial in its ethical and
spiritual implications. In as much as the opera has a theme, the theme is Kindheit: education, upbringing,
self-determination, and spiritual growth.’ Much of that came through strongly –
in both musical and dramatic fashion. Indeed, as one would expect in so
post-Wagnerian a work, the distinction made no sense. What certainly made an
impression – ‘sense’ will be in the eyes and ears of the beholders, the
listeners – was the overriding idea, modernist (?) fragmentary tendencies
notwithstanding, of self-formation, of a Bildung
that is, has been, and, doubtless ever shall be both classical and anything
but.
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Alphonse Cemin (Nurse), Eva soprano (Léa
Trommenschlager), Maxime Morel (Nurse), Luzifer bass (Damien
Pass)
Image: Meng Phu
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There was, perhaps, something
necessarily didactic to the first act. (I think one may, even should, accept a
degree of essentialism when it comes to Stockhausen. Can one really fail to do
so in the German tradition of which he is unquestionably part?) So it felt, at
any rate, to me. Following our call to observance in a very particular version
of ‘Donnerstags-Gruss’, heard throughout the house but faintly, impinging upon
our consciousness, almost switching us or our receptivity on, the first act
proceeded almost as if it were a director’s metatheatrical intervention,
drawing upon the composer’s biography to elucidate. Except, of course, and with
every respect to Lazar’s fine work, the director in that sense remained Stockhausen
himself. We were free to draw whatever lessons we wished – none, I suppose,
should we not have wished to do so – from Michael’s experience and education,
his navigation of boundaries between his father’s (militaristic yet also
theatrical) example and his mother’s (musical, carnal, and also theatrical).
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| Iris
Zerdoud (Mondeva), Damien Bigorudan (Michael) Image: Stéfan Brion |
Michael’s coming of age, the
loss of his mother and brother, was Stockhausen’s but not his: it was, in Orphic
tradition, that of music too. In Wagner’s tradition, moreover, it was that of
art as opposed to different arts: the Gesamtkunstwerk,
if you will, a term often more suited to Wagner’s successors (and indeed to his
predecessors’ Romantic aspirations) than to his own dramas and theories. Gesture
in the traditional form of dance – as opposed to the broader Wagnerian transformation
into staging and/or production – played here and elsewhere not only a crucial
role but a role that questions and unifies, just as does singing, just as does
instrumental performance. We see, hear, think of, even dream the relationships
between these outstanding performers of different types. (Or are they
different? Is that but our fragmented fantasy?) When Mondeva, whatever her
relationship to mother Eva, showed her talons, sounded her basset horn, yielded
to the young Siegfried (sorry, Michael), the hallowed German Romantic forest or
memories thereof came back to life – albeit here subtly, without a hint of bad
nineteenth- or twentieth-century to them. No wonder, then, he proceeded to pass
his exams with flying colours. A musician had been dreamed, formed, made
incarnate.
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| Maxime Morel (tuba), Henri Deléger (trumpet) Image: Stéfan Brion |
The instrumental fantasy of the
second act, ‘Michaels Reise um die Erde’, as much perhaps a concerto for orchestra
as for solo trumpeter (here the outstanding Henri Deléger), offered in many
ways the greatest of contrasts. Having been ‘educated’, were we now to ‘enjoy’ –
to tour the world, our worlds, other worlds (dramatic, galactic, etc.)? Yes,
but not only yes. For the strange rhymes, the peculiar memories and
remembrances, of the first act had formed us. There is nothing random, nothing
arbitrary to Stockhausen – no more here in Licht
than in any work of so-called ‘total serialism’. The composer’s formulae were
doing their work, guiding us, in a total(itarian) way serving very much to
remind us of his lineage. Michael’s instrumental companions, antagonists,
interlocutors, guided yet liberated by Pascal, by Lazar, and – you have guessed
it – by Stockhausen, played games with themselves, with us, dreamed of
themselves, of others, most likely of us.
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Eva (soprano) Léa Trommenschlager (act I),
Eva (dancer) Suzanne Meyer,
Eva (soprano) Elise Chauvin (act III),
Michael (trumpet) Henri Deléger,
Michael (dancer) Emmanuelle Grach
Image: Meng Phu
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For this, whether one likes it
or no, is a world of mysticism: a mysticism prepared and finally explicit in
the third act, in a ‘return’ that, like all returns, is as much concerned with
what is new as with what is old. (‘Sonate, que veux-me tu?’ That, among many
other things.) Choirs as celestial as those in Bach, theology as heretical as
in Wagner and as unanswerable as in Messiaen (and Bach!), musical virtuosity,
theatrical accomplishment: those and so much more, inviting yet rejecting such
easy comparisons, recreated a world we both knew and did not. And, of course,
they (re-)invited in our constant companion(s), Luzifer – again, of song, of
instrument (trombone), of dance. There was victory, but at what cost? There
were rejoicing and certainty – again, at what cost? This was the very stuff of
drama as much as of ritual, of fantasy as much as of truth, of heroic dissent
as much as harmonious union. Stockhausen was reborn both our eyes and ears.
I have, I confess, grown a
little impatient with armchair listeners continuing to peddle the hackneyed
line that the Stockhausen of Licht
onwards demonstrated a sad, megalomaniacal decline, whilst acknowledging when
pressed that they have never actually attended a performance of the Licht operas. There may be good reason
for their not having done so; it does not, however, follow that such critics can
possibly in a position to dismiss the works. No more than any other opera – rather
less than many in the so-called ‘repertoire’ – should any of these works be
considered as a ‘purely musical’ work. It may or may not be revealing simply to
listen, simply to read the score. To give these extraordinary works a proper chance,
though, one must engage theatrically with them. In turn, we need (excellent)
performances and stagings to do so. For that, and for much else, we should be
grateful indeed to the Opéra Comique and this intrepid band of artists. No one there
will forget this, nor them, in a hurry.
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| Luzifer dancer (Jamil Attar), Luzifer trombone (Mathieu Adam), Michael trumpet (Henri Deléger), Michael dancer (Emmanuelle Grach) Image: Meng Phu |
Such was not the least of the
messages one might have taken, at the close, from the boy Michael learning from
his mature selves and the rest of the heavenly cosmos, what the past, present,
and future might entail. Enlightenment, Licht
as well as Bildung, was seen as well
as heard before our eyes, ears, and much else. I have concentrated here far
more on the totality, on the overall ‘effect’, rather than on individual
contributions; I hope that will not be taken amiss, as a failure to acknowledge
their generally outstanding quality. Such was the collegial commitment of all
concerned – the audience included, if the wild enthusiasm of its final
reception were anything to go by. I have no doubt that it was. Stockhausen,
ultimately, tends no more to provoke doubts than Bach. He is what he is – and
this was what it was, something quite out of the ordinary. As we retreated into the Place Boieldieu for an 'invisible' musical farewell that spoke or rather sang as much of Gabrieli as new galaxies, that was something we simply, or not so simply, knew. Not entirely unlike the composer into whose cult we had been (re)admitted.
