Mittwoch, Deutsche Oper, 19 September 2026 (German premiere)

President – Jeremy Bines
Substitute President – Rachel Pinevska
Caretaker’s Voice – Jörg Schörner
Operator – Robin Adams
Performers – Marie Groothof, Tarren Johnson, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Dominic Santia, Laurie Young

Director – Susanne Kennedy
Conception – Markus Selg, Susanne Kennedy
Set design – Markus Seig
Lighting – Marcel Weber/MFO
Video – Warja Rybakova, Markus Seig
Costumes – Andra Dumitrascu
Dramaturgy – Beate Breidenbach

String Quartet of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Anna Matz, Monia Rizkallah (violins), Kirsikka de Leval Jezierski (viola), Arne-Christian Pelz (cello))

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (director: Jeremy Bines)

Florent Derex (sound projection)

Augustin Müller (computer music design)

Ensemble Le Balcon

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Mittwoch aus Licht von Karlheinz Stockhausen, Regie: Susanne Kennedy, Premiere: 19.9.2026 Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Julian Roeder

Is it really fourteen years since Lucicamel, intergalactic, camelious emanation of the fallen angel Lucifer, trod (and danced) the Birmingham boards? Apparently so. At any rate, stagings of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch have been non-existent since that 2012 staged premiere, so this overture to Aviel Cahn’s Deutsche Oper intendancy marked its first appearance in a German house. (In 2003, the opera had its radio premiere on SWR2 under Stockhausen’s supervision.) The late Graham Vick’s Birmingham Oper Company’s production at the disused Argyle Works was a heroic one-off; some of us may have feared literally, never to be repeated. Does this return to the last completed of the composer’s vast Licht cycle mark the beginning of its entry into the repertoire? We can but hope so, alongside the other six days of creation, all of which have now been given by Maxime Pascal and Le Balcon, here joined by Deutsche Oper forces for another unforgettable evening, which, if not without flaws, will surely long be remembered by all present. 

It began in the foyer. So, one might say, does every evening at the Deutsche Oper—and yes, unless one were to be dropped by helicopter into a newly roofless auditorium, that will be the case. But here it began more emphatically, with the purely electronic ‘greeting’, ‘Mittwochs-Gruß’, whilst some were chatting, some drinking, some consulting the programme, some staring into space, and so on. That, I think, is important, because it acted as something akin to a call to worship, or to whatever mysterious rite Licht is or has become. It continued, sound design by Florent Derex, as we took our seats, and would be paralleled by ‘Mittwochs-Abschied’ at the close. As Mittwoch entered the opera house for the first time, it helped frame questions as to whether it belongs here, will and should it be assimilated, and what consequences will that hold for the future. Parsifal has long since entered the repertoire—and much for the better. But do conventional houses, such as even Stockhausen has generally been premiered and performed in, offer an appropriate setting, facilities, musicians, and even audience?

As boundaries dissolved between sacred and secular, rite and performance, ideal and reality, the frustration who was once Stockhausen’s closest contemporaries, Pierre Boulez, inspired by Bayreuth and depressed by the day-to-day business of other houses came to mind: ‘like cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!”’ Or, less temperately: ‘New German opera houses certainly look very modern—from the outside; on the inside, they have remained extremely old-fashioned. To a theatre in which mostly repertory pieces are performed one can only with the greatest difficulty bring a modern opera—it is unthinkable. The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant solution?’ 

Less concerned with the works of others – he occasionally conducted them, but usually as a frame for his own music, for instance incorporating his own cadenzas – Stockhausen was nonetheless given to not dissimilar flights of fancy, or so at the time they seemed: less playful or angry, more mystical-visionary or, according to taste, absurd. ‘I remember a music festival in Vienna at the beginning of the 1950s,’ Hans Werner Henze would recall: ‘We were driving back to the city with publishers from Universal Edition after an evening’s drinking in Grinzing, when Stockhausen said on seeing the still somewhat sparsely lit city: “Look, down there you can see the ocean of light that is Vienna. In a few years’ time I will have progressed so far that, with a single electronic bang, I’ll be able to blow the whole city sky-high!”’ Henze ‘pointed out that there were already perfectly adequate explosives for such purposes and that musicians might therefore do better to turn their attention to other matters.’ When I first read that passage many years ago, my inclination was to smile and nod with Henze. Now I am not so sure—partly because the world has changed, but partly on account of greater experience of a work such as Mittwoch. Did it explode Charlottenburg? Not as such, nor did it even blow the opera house in the air, after Boulez. However, it attested to a vision that was yet not only a vision, and one in which we could participate.

 

The opera ‘proper’ – is that a meaningful designation? – opened with the extraordinary Welt-Parlament, polyphonic in every sense, cosmic in more than the merely hippyish (admittedly far from absent here). Jeremy Bines presided (literally, as President with gavel, doubling thereby as conductor) in an international discussion, some languages familiar, some new. Its ‘theme’ of love and particular exploration may seem dated, far more so, perhaps, than that of The Magic Flute, but it charmed with a similar wide-eyed wonder, Stockhausen’s particular brand of harmonious polyphony similarly beguiling from the Deutsche Oper chorus, Rachel Pinevska’s coloratura as substitute President (when her superior was called away by the caretaker to move his car) crowning her a decidedly more chilled successor to Mozart’s nocturnal queen. This was an extraordinary achievement for an opera house chorus and its director. Its enchantment will surely have brought more converts. Susanne Kennedy’s staging was generally straightforward and, in most ways, all the better for that. It did not look that dissimilar from Vick’s, which may – here I am speculating – have been a stipulation of the composer’s estate. Hearing it in a vastly superior acoustic made the experience a more musical one, although various spatial and mobile aspects were lost. Video from Warja Rybakova and Markus Selg was here, as elsewhere (the Helicopter-Quartet a welcome exception), a little tiring at times—all the more so when it encompassed ‘AI’. However, having experienced the recent Bayreuth Ring, anything else would offer relief. It was possible to ignore it for the most part, since it remained at the back of the stage. A recurring, all-seeing eye reminded us of the ultimate Divinity.

‘Orchester-Finalisten’ and the Quartet scene followed the first interval, essentially forming a second act. In a spirit of collaboration such as Stockhausen would surely have approved, Le Balcon and Pascal, excellent as ever, despatched the first scene and the Deutsche Oper String Quartet the second, Derex common to both, joined by assistants, technicians, and of course pilots in that latter case. These can seem, even when one has begun to know the work, a challenge to integrate into any such conception. There is no obvious narrative link, indeed not much in the way of dramatic narrative at all. But there is wonder once again—and there was here. The first parade of instrumentalists (and instruments) was captivating, indeed enthralling. Kennedy’s introduction of performers common to all four scenes helped with binding together—or at least permitting one to draw connections. Their movement, dance, ritualistic actions and so forth were certainly preferable to ‘AI’ images of trains and birds when, I presume, the music was held to sound a bit ‘like’ them.

The helicopter dream seemed more overtly connected in musical terms this time around, though that may simply have been my greater familiarity and the more musical acoustic. If the excitement of events (recorded at Berlin-Brandenburg Airport a week or so before) must have been of quite another order in person, the performance was thrillingly relayed, a welcome addition to the screens for four quartet members an additional camera from under one of the helicopters, permitting one to see how the machines (helicopters and indeed strings) viewed and doubtless heard one another. It was quite a ride, and seemed perfectly timed. (Thank you, Stockhausen.) Any longer and it might have seemed too much, but Goldilocks would have approved. Instead of an interview with the performers, we had Stockhausen’s own words as recorded: a touching visitation from Sirius. Again, it is worth adding: what an extraordinary feat of musical and technical performance. It is truly like nothing else; it neither could nor should be. Yet the experience it offers, if hardly sustainable, is both more so and more wondrous than anything ‘AI’ will. 

And so, to Michaelion, the fourth and final scene. It was only here – and only, I should emphasise, in certain measure – that I felt a little disappointment. (Such, after all, is life in the opera house, even Bayreuth: indeed, sometimes especially Bayreuth.) I had not felt it drag before, and I am certain this was not the doing of Pascal and Le Balcon. It took me a while – actually, the observation of a friend following the performance – to work out why. It was, I am afraid, once again the fault of ‘AI’: not so much use of it in itself, as the particular form, presumably the ‘prompts’ employed, or at least apologists for this technology would have us believe so. The incessant, repetitive movement was all in one direction, all heading (from our standpoint) forward. That not only became extremely wearing, but also contrasted unhelpfully, banally with the many directions taken by the music and, to a lesser extent, even the circular motion of the staging. In addition, it was here that I felt most keenly the loss of the distancing employed – and employable – in the Birmingham chemical works. There we viewed and indeed heard this scene as something remote, of which we were vouchsafed a glimpse, but which we could not truly approach. That, to me, captured its mysteries better, though it would have been well-nigh impossible in this venue. 

One further cavil: why no dance for Lucicamel? It seemed an odd omission, following prescribed swig of champagne from the bottle, and contributed to a slight sense of anticlimax in the scene: crucial not only in itself, but in anchoring the opera within the greater context of Licht. Rhineland-humour – that same, Hanoverian friend rightly corrected my designation ‘German’ – may not be for us all, or rather for all the time. But it is called for here; we encounter Lucicamel so rarely, it was a pity. Encounter him, though, we did, both as camel and then as Operator, Robin Adams a commanding presence once elected by intergalactic representatives and emerged from the camel suit. It was, moreover, a delight to see the return of the same suit used not only in Birmingham, but for the ‘Michaelion’ premiere at Munich’s Prinzregententheater in 1998. Short-wave radio brought its surprises and appeared charmingly dated: ‘period’ technology, one might say. If future productions may be permitted to step beyond Stockhausen’s prescriptions – unlike Wagner or Beckett, he was no theatre director – that will doubtless be welcome, but for now, it is not the gravest of concerns. Childlike wonder was retained and enhanced, in a world that seemed, recognisably, on the brink. 

For here, it seemed, was one of those rare occasions when opera took a step, arguably more than one, beyond not its only own aesthetic, however generously defined, but that of Western art more generally. They remain firmly rooted in that primary aesthetic of course; that is not the point. There is Mozart in The Magic Flute, unquestionably; Janáček in The Cunning Little Vixen; there are others, doubtless, but not so many. Henze certainly never did, though nor did he have any desire. Vienna is for most of us fine as it is, or could readily be attended to through explosives. (Please, please, literally minded people: do not take that as a threat to a city I love. I have no desire to wake up, like Boulez, to Swiss police a generation later, come to arrest me as a ‘terrorist’.) But it is meet and right to be reminded, from time to time, that there are alternatives—and that the opera houses Boulez, Stockhausen, and others dating back to and beyond Wagner have, in many ways, justly disdained can and will join them, if only from time to time, to a higher purpose than Boulez’s café. 

Now, please, the rest of Licht, perhaps in cooperation with other houses, other institutions. Whatever it takes: the world needs a premiere of all seven days, even if the explosives, the oil, the computers, the Lucifers, those who would blow the opera houses into the air should bring down the curtain thereafter.

Salzburg Festival (3) - Le Balcon/Pascal: Nono, Boulez, and Stockhausen, 19 August 2025

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Nono: A Pierre. Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum
Boulez: sur Incises
Stockhausen: Klavierstück XIV – ‘Geburtstag-Formel’
Boulez: …explosante-fixe…

Julie Brunet-Jailly (flute)

Alphonse Cemin (piano)

Augustin Muller (IRCAM electronics)

Sylvain Cadars (IRCAM sound diffusion)

Le Balcon

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Pierre Boulez’s broader musical-cultural legacy lies everywhere, both in what he achieved and what, sadly, he did not. Quite rightly, in this centenary year we are taking time to focus more specifically on his musical works. From his 1960 Salzburg debut (Stockhausen, Webern, and Boulez, in the presence of Herbert von Karajan), the Festival has long experienced and participated in both—and especially from 1992, at the invitation of Gerard Mortier and Hans Landesmann. I shall rue till my dying day having passed up the opportunity to hear his Moses und Aron, on my first, student visit. It was inevitable, given the choice of one opera, that I would opt for Mozart, yet nevertheless… Here, in any case, the Festival’s centenary tribute will focus on both strands, or rather on three or more, the third being the presence and influence even in non-presence of electronics both in his music and in that broader legacy, exemplified by IRCAM and represented here by Augustin Muller and Sylvain Cadars. 

The mini-series ‘A Pierre’ opened with this concert, which in turn opened in pleasing symmetry with Luigi Nono’s sixtieth birthday tribute for his colleague, A Pierre. Dell Azzurro silenzio, inquietum, for contrabass flute, contrabass clarinet, and live electronics. One instrument entered, then the other: were they playing together or separately? Had they merged? One asked that even before the advent of electronics, or was it? Differences were almost, yet never quite, imperceptible, a message dell-ascolto from the somewhat non-Boulezian world of Prometeo. One was drawn in to listen, in harmony, in polyphony, ever transforming, ever deeper. I could have sworn at one point I heard voices – as in vocal music – and perhaps, in a way, I did. The role of electronics was ‘for’ Pierre, at least, as the Venetian waves lapped and almost Mahlerian vistas opened up before our ears. 

It is an obvious point, but I do not think it had quite registered with me, at least experientially, quite how much difference the performing space would make to a performance of sur Incises. My ears, doubtless my eyes, associate it above all with Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, where I have heard Daniel Barenboim conduct it more than once (including the hall’s opening concert) with his own created Boulez Ensemble. In a more conventional smallish hall, not in the round, lines seemed more obviously to lead from the conductor—and, in a sense, seated not far behind Maxime Pascal, from the ensemble too—with clear consequences for experience of many aspects of the work ‘itself’. Whether it was that, or the performances of Le Balcon and Pascal—it may have been both—that made the opening section sound quite so Debussyan, I am not sure. It came as a subsequent shock to my ears to hear quite so many floating roots, if you will, in Scriabin in the writing for pianos of the following section. Perhaps it was simply me; never underestimate the role of your own preoccupations or chance connections. However strictly organised, listening as well as composition and performance will break free. When rhythm took its place as first among equals, Stravinsky came most forcefully to mind and, a little more surprisingly, Prokofiev, although then I remember hearing Boulez express admiration for the piano writing in the composer’s concertos. These where ghosts, though, rather than definite influences, and soon one felt—at least I did—fully immersed, albeit actively immersed as, I flattered myself, a participant, enticed and welcomed by performers and work alike. What also struck me was the liminal passages in which not only classic parameters but time and music seemed stretched, even bent: Debussy again, perhaps, even Chopin. Resonance, in more than one sense, played its part too. Waves of a different kind were felt, not only heard, sound and music moving through space as well as time, as Gurnemanz might (not) have put it. 

Following some much needed fresh air, we returned to the hall (the same hall that hosted Boulez’s 1960 debut) for Stockhausen’s contribution to that same 1985 Baden-Baden birthday tribute: Klavierstück XIV, later to be heard as part of the composer’s Montag (for various reasons, a work Boulez was unlikely ever to have conducted). My heart went out to Alphonse Cemin when, just before he was about to begin, a lengthy telephonic intervention rang out. Such was its length that, at least for the audience, it became quite amusing. Was it Karlheinz himself, attempting to dial in from Sirius? When Cemin, a worthy successor to Pierre-Laurent Aimard, gave his fine performance, we were immediately in a different world from anything heard in the first half, though the whimsy of that introduction perhaps persisted a little in his verbal contributions. Here, unquestionably, was a miniature drama, though not only that, and in its ‘birthday formula’ mode, an intriguing set-up for Boulez’s own …explosante-fixe…, founded as it is on what has reasonably been considered a compositional ‘kit’. It was also music unquestionably ‘for’ the piano and to be enjoyed as such by performer and listeners alike in something not so very distant from what we know as music theatre. 

And so, to …explosante-fixe…, which I had not heard live for a little while: the last time, I think, ten years ago for Boulez’s 90^th anniversary, at the Proms. Julie Brunet-Jailly was joined by fellow, ‘shadow’ flautists and other members of Le Balcon in the fullest ensemble of the evening, as well of course as our friends from IRCAM and Pascal. It worked very differently, perhaps better, in the space than sur Incises; or maybe it was more that my ears had adjusted. The immediacy, even straightforward volume, nonetheless took a little getting used to, though only a little. The alchemy of sound in space proved quite magical, even seductive, as if presaging Boulez’s own, later Szymanowskian enchantment. Here was not only a labyrinth, but something between riot and delirium within a labyrinth that was always transforming before our ears: itself somewhere between Pli and pli and the orchestral Notations, which, I suppose, is where the work lies in Boulez’s œuvre. The bending of time I had felt in sur Incises continued, here in a world of very different, dazzling, (quasi-)orchestral fantasy that it was difficult not to think almost classically ‘French’. (Perhaps the presence of French performers contributed to that.) Dimming the lights for passages of ‘pure’ electronics was a theatrical touch, yet a winning one: in highlighting the organ pipes at the back of the stage, it almost suggested a role for that instrument, though alas not. I certainly heard things I could not recall from previous encounters: unexpected guests from The Rite of Spring, the sage’s procession turned post-Sixties psychedelic (or was that Messiaenic)? There was a sense, I fancied, of an almost Bachian mirroring and inversion in the electronics: not necessarily literally, but a quality felt or imagined. Other aspects comfortably, yet never too comfortably returned: those trills and tremolos, for instance. And I realised, only at the close, one thing that made this a relatively unusual soundworld for Boulez ensemble music. Obvious when you think about it: no percussion. So long as we continue to listen, we shall never cease to learn—even the most basic of things.

 

Donnerstag, Opéra Comique, 17 November 2018

 Salle Favart

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

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.

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.

Alphonse Cemin (Nurse), Eva soprano (Léa Trommenschlager), Maxime Morel (Nurse),  Luzifer bass (Damien Pass) 

Image: Meng Phu

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.