When I read that Oper Köln were producing the world premier
production of Karlheinz Stockhausen's SONNTAG aus LICHT, the temptation to spot
such a rare bird (alongside the opportunity to visit for the first
time the city of Köln itself) proved too much. Nevertheless, I was in two minds
about seeing the opera – the piece was being produced over two nights and is
the culminating part of the composer's seven part LICHT cycle of operas, one
composed for every day of the week. The LICHT cycle is based around the rather
obscure cosmic interplay between three characters - Michael, Eva and Lucifer -
each of whom is represented musically by a formula which is then experimented
with over the many hours of the seven operas. I'd heard a recording of SAMSTAG
aus LICHT and, although I liked the music, the libretto as printed in the box
set is almost impenetrable and very difficult to visualize as a piece of
theatre. But on the basis that the opportunity to see one of the LICHT operas is something unlikely to come
around too often - only one, DONNERSTAG aus LICHT, has ever been staged in
London (at Covent Garden) and I get the impression that the British critics
gave it the kind of welcome that isn't likely to encourage our main houses to
try that kind of thing again - I booked tickets, a hotel and flights...
I was delighted to read, just before going, that the staging
of the opera had been placed in the brilliant hands of the Catalan theatre
troup La Fura del Baus, whose production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre was atriumph at the ENO and whose Valencia Ring cycle, available on Blu-ray, is a
successful attempt at placing Wagner's masterpieces in the context of virtual
reality. If anyone could make SONNTAG aus LICHT work, it was them.
Yet SONNTAG looks, on paper, impossible. Not merely the
length, not merely the acquired taste that is Stockhausen's music but the
concept of a near-on eight hour opera in which there is not only minimal story
but also absolutely no drama whatsoever doesn't promise to be a theatrically
exciting event. Lucifer, the cycle's antagonist described by the composer as
"this very sceptical and often negative spirit" (Ermen & Stockhausen,
2011, p. 190),
scarcely appears in SONNTAG and when he does he is easily subdued. The work is
about the "mystical union of Eve and Michael" (Ibid.) and they spend the entire opera working together in order
to, wait for it, praise God. Stockhausen said "All of this worships God
through my music, because from the very beginning I have composed my oeuvre to
worship God. Now it has been said. And the music sounds like that, I
think." (Ibid., p. 193) Not an
event, therefore, which is likely to go down a storm in European intellectual
circles, sceptical and negative as they tend towards being. But also, it didn't sound something
that would possess the energetic drive which I, for one, hope for from an
evening (or two) of live performance.
The opera is made up of five scenes and a
"farewell". Oper Köln have staged the piece as an enormous
site-specific project in the Staatenhaus am Rheinpark, a large 1920s building
largely used for conferences and "events" on the right bank of the
Rhine. The opera is staged in two auditoriums – A, a circular, white space and
B, a very long, rectangular space with raked seating facing an impossibly deep
"stage". The first two scenes are staged in A, where the audience sit
on (unreserved) low-lying deckchairs with the performance going on around them.
Immediately, the first scene LIGHTS – WATERS (SUNDAY
GREETING) is like very little I've ever seen and heard before. Lying in their
deckchair, the audience listens to a long, sonorous, inter-weaving duet between
Michael and Eva; the musicians are instructed by the pair to move around the
auditorium and play from specific points (all of this, as well as the lay-out
of the auditorium, is specified in detail in the libretto). Both white- clad,
Michael in a spacesuit sings from a sideways-rotating podium whilst Eva wanders
around mostly encased in a rubber suit in which a number of voiceless,
white-faced women writhe (reminiscent of the Borg). Through the scene, some
obscure slow process seems to be taking place – giant fan-wings rotate above us
and projections of space, planets and radar-screens travel around the walls and
ceilings. This all reminded me, in terms of imagery and pace, of the
spacecraft docking scenes in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. By the end of the
scene, Michael and Eva have achieved something, although it is hard to put
one's finger on exactly what. They have, along the way, sung the praises of
Light and the Solar System. I got the feeling that, by the end, a union has
been completed…
Scene two, ANGEL PROCESSIONS, is also in auditorium A; we
returned but took different deckchairs – some of the audience were freaked out
by this randomness and the idea that the place they say in scene 1 isn't still
"their" place. In this scene, seven angelic choirs, each dressed in a different
colour of rubber suit, move down the aisles of the auditorium, each singing
in a different language (Hindi, Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic, African [Kiswahili], German), finally
placing flowers on a central pillar. The choirs create a polyphonic and rather
mesmerising sound; again, things are sonorous but by the close of the scene,
something seems to have been achieved. For me, the scene offered a vision of
several "missions" of light-bearers/message-bearers bringing their
"flowers" (I take these metaphorically) to the earth.
In scene 3, LIGHT PICTURES, we meet Michael (sung superbly
by the Tenor Hubert Mayer) again but this time in Auditorium B. We are given 3D
spectacles on the way in. Michael and three musicians – trumpet, flute and
basset horn – stand at the front of a shallow pool of water before a giant
screen. The musicians play (from memory) and the tenor sings praise to the
seven days of creation (these don't correspond to the Biblical account),
culminating in the praise of God and his church. As this happens,
computer-generated 3D images are projected and it is as if each figure –
whether it be an abstract amoeba or an imagined landscape or a recognisable
animal – is travelling through a cosmic mind, which of course is the mind of
the individual audience member at the time of performance. Amongst the final
images we see are the twin towers of Köln's famous Cathedral. Occasionally, the
screen is pulled back and an impossibly deep expanse of stage is revealed, the
rest of the pool then a concrete surface; on this, dancers perform abstract
moves. It is as if the surface of reality is occasionally pulled back to reveal
the cosmic dance of creation behind it. This scene is spellbinding. Again (as
in all the scenes), the music – which seems at first shapeless – has a
culminating effect and I felt as if I'd been witness to some mysterious
process; perhaps not merely witness but party also, as the audience at a
ceremony or ritual are not merely passive spectators but partakers in the
ritual event. Intriguingly, Michael and the musician are dressed here in a mix between futuristic and medieval costumes, as if the future Stockhausen envisages is a return to a world pre-Reformation.
The first evening of SONNTAG aus LICHT was a fascinating
experience. I was mostly spellbound by the music, yet not moved. Some (Luciferian?) doubts persisted in my
mind as to the mysticism of the piece – was it just all just a load of intriguing-sounding New Age cobblers?
Yes, the staging and projections were overwhelming in their beauty but does the
event have any intellectual substance? Nevertheless, I looked forwards to the
second evening without any feelings of weariness or wariness.
(Continued in next blog)
Works Cited
Ermen, R., & Stockhausen, K.
(2011). Karlheinz Stockhausen talks to Reinhard Ermen about SUNDAY from LIGHT.
In K. Stockhausen, SONNTAG aus LICHT:
(pp. 189-210). Kürten: Stockhausen - Stiftung für Musik.
Hi James
ReplyDeletethanks for this. I look forward to reading about part 2.
Mark
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