"Opera in the Clouds"
by Alex Ross
The New Yorker, Sept. 15, 2012
From 1977 until 2003, Karlheinz
Stockhausen channelled his torrential
creative energies into a seven-part, sci-fi
operatic cycle called “Licht,” or “Light.”
Each installment is named for a day of the
week; in all, the music lasts twenty-nine
hours, quite a bit longer than Wagner’s
“Ring.” At the time of Stockhausen’s
death, in 2007, two of the operas had not yet been staged: “Sonntag” (Sunday), the
last to be completed, and “Mittwoch”
(Wednesday), written in the mid-nineties.
Not the least of the issues hindering a full
production of “Mittwoch” was the fact
that one scene requires four string players
to leave the hall, go to a nearby landing
strip, and play for half an hour while flying
in helicopters. Opera is difficult enough
without having to deal with aviation permits. Many people assumed that the heptalogy, as Stockhausenites call it, would
die away with the composer, its lofty aims
defeated by megalomania.
Recently, though, “Licht” has found
new life. Last year, “Sonntag” had its première, in Cologne, and in August the Birmingham Opera, in England, with help
from the cultural arm of the London
Olympics, finally conquered the “Mittwoch” challenge. Thus it came to pass
that Stockhausen’s vision found fulfillment at a former chemical factory in Digbeth. Heavy rain in the afternoon threatened the aerial segment, but by the time
the members of the Elysian Quartet arrived at their helicopters the skies had
turned a brilliant blue. It was Stockhausen’s eighty-fourth birthday.
In a question-and-answer session after
the helicopter scene—this is the rare
opera that calls for a Q. & A. in the
score—one of the pilots confessed that he
found the whole thing “bonkers.” It wasn’t
the first time that Stockhausen had been
so diagnosed. Having achieved sufficient
renown in the sixties that his face appeared on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper” (top
row, between Lenny Bruce and W. C.
Fields), he fell into mystical speculation in
his later years, adopting the mien of a
minor cult leader. Assistants ran around
trying to realize his demands, including,
it’s said, arranging Christmas lights according to the Fibonacci series. Much of
“Licht” is derived from “The Urantia Book,”
an early-twentieth-century religious text
of obscure provenance, in which Christ is
described as an incarnation of the Archangel Michael. The episodes of “Licht”
chronicle attachments, conflicts, and reconciliations between Michael and his archetypal companions, Eve and Lucifer.
The plot of “Mittwoch,” such as it is,
deals in themes of “love—friendship—
cosmic solidarity.” In the first scene, a
World Parliament, in the form of an
a-cappella chorus, convenes to discuss the
problem of love. When the president of
the parliament learns that his car is about
to be towed—“Licht” has surprising
touches of slapstick—he rushes out, and a
coloratura soprano takes over. In the second scene, “Orchestra Finalists,” a dozen
musicians glide through the air, evoking
alien cultures. Then comes the famous
“Helicopter String Quartet,” its relation to
the “Licht” scheme never quite explained.
You get the feeling that Stockhausen simply thought that it would be awesome to
have musicians fly in helicopters. The
quartet has been performed on its own before, and at its première, in 1995, the
composer excitedly narrated the proceedings, as if he were reporting on a NASA
launch. In “Michaelion,” the final scene,
delegates from around the universe elect a
new president, choosing a shortwave-radio operator who somehow emerges
from a dancing camel.
Bonkers, quite. But if we were to disqualify composers for pursuing daft ideas
we would lose much of the repertory.
“Mittwoch,” in a joyously imaginative
realization by the director Graham Vick,
proved enthralling for much of its six-hour duration. Often, the cosmology
seems an excuse for sonic pageantry: spastic instrumental solos, intricately layered
choruses, chaotic orchestral swells, rich
infusions of electronic timbre. Stockhausen’s gifts as a painter in sound never left
him. Only in the final scene does the
kookiness of the subject matter become
seriously distracting. “I will tune you in
like a receiver,” voices sing, “but whether or not you sound clear depends on you.”
Roger that.
As it turned out, the helicopter escapade, which the audience observed on
video screens inside the cavernous Digbeth space, was in some ways the least interesting part of the show. The logistics
were expertly handled: under the musical
direction of Kathinka Pasveer, Stockhausen’s longtime collaborator, incessant
tremolos and glissandos blended neatly
with the sound of the rotors. The trouble
is that the novelty wears off halfway
through; nothing changes, and tedium
sets in. The preceding scenes, “World
Parliament” and “Orchestra Finalists,”
are a different matter. They build to
convulsive climaxes—in the one, an ecstatic chorus in the area of E-flat major;
in the other, antic solos for trombone
and double-bass, both hovering around
D-flat. (Stockhausen’s later music, while
related in principle to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method, often leans toward tonality.)
The musical construction is masterly, and
the primary “Licht” motifs have a way of
sticking in the mind.
Vick put on what could be described as
a high-end psychedelic circus. The small
army of performers included not only the
Elysian Quartet, an orchestra, and two
choruses (Ex Cathedra and London
Voices) but also dozens of volunteer actors
from the Birmingham area. The production began in darkness, with an extended
electronic prelude, heavy on drones, rumbling from the speakers. Then sudden
flashes of light revealed enigmatically
pretty tableaux: a boy flying a kite; young
men clambering up walls; a woman showering with a watering can; another woman
opening a box, out of which floated a balloon. In “World Parliament,” the singers
of Ex Cathedra were perched on high yellow chairs, their faces painted with national colors. Their performance was a
phenomenal feat of musicianship; the climax had a rollicking energy, like modernist gospel.
What I will remember longest, though,
is the sublime anarchy of “Orchestra Finalists.” The musicians dangled in ski-lift-like chairs while listeners lay on their
backs. On the ground, kids scampered
this way and that, paper airplanes were
tossed, bewhiskered gentlemen strode
about with steam issuing from their top
hats. During the trombone solo—heroically executed by Andrew Connington—a children’s wading pool was pushed
down the length of the hall on a wheeled
platform, a boy splashing inside. When
the pool arrived beneath him, Connington plunged in, glissandoing all the while.
(Stockhausen doesn’t actually ask for such a
thing to happen, but it seemed apt.) You’d
think that Connington’s feat couldn’t be
upstaged, but Jeremy Watt nearly outdid
him with a manically dancing, shouting
double-bass solo, at one point falling flat
on his back with his instrument on top of
him. This was in strict accordance with
the score.
Stockhausen intended “Finalists” as an
antidote to the chilly routine of musical
competitions. Players should project a
“personal aura,” he said. Often accused of
domineering tendencies, he here liberated
his musicians, let them be. The entire
work, for all its unaccountable aspects
(space does not permit a description of the
scene in which the camel defecates seven
planets), felt more like a communal exercise than like one man’s egotistical creation. Afterward, the performers mingled
with the audience, and “Happy Birthday”
was sung to the absent composer, who,
one assumes, was listening happily from
his home planet.
John Cage, whose centenary is being
celebrated around the world this week (a major festival is under way in Washington, D.C., of all places), was a cooler
cat than Stockhausen, his zany reputation notwithstanding. If “Mittwoch” is
vastly more fun than its Urantian scenario
suggests, Cage’s 1987 work “Europeras 1
and 2”—a chance-controlled mélange of
arias from sixty-four operas—is an unexpectedly dark and moody thing. “For two
hundred years, the Europeans have been
sending us their operas,” Cage said of the
piece. “Now I’m sending them back.” On
the night before “Mittwoch,” I was in
Bochum, Germany, for a performance of
“Europeras 1 and 2,” at the Ruhrtriennale festival. Heiner Goebbels, the current director of the Ruhrtriennale, staged
the work in the cathedral-like Jahrhunderthalle, which once housed a power
plant for the local steel industry. The
vogue for repurposing industrial-age
spaces toward cultural ends, which Bochum pioneered, has been a boon for
avant-garde works that are ill-suited to
traditional venues; the New York Philharmonic proved as much when it gave
gripping rendition of Stockhausen’s
“Gruppen,” for three semi-independent
orchestras, at the Park Avenue Armory,
in June.
In Cage’s scheme, the aria collage of
“Europeras” is accompanied by a randomized array of costumes and sets from
various periods. Goebbels, working in
collaboration with the set designer Klaus
Grünberg and the costume designer
Florence von Gerkan, produced an ever-changing, at times dazzling spectacle,
drawing on theatre archives going back
hundreds of years. Baroque phantasmagorias intersected with grand-opera
Egyptian vistas and the luminous early-modern visions of Adolphe Appia. Meanwhile, ten gifted singers churned through
centuries of repertory, ranging from
“Carmen” and “Otello” to such brain-teasing fare as Anton Rubinstein’s “Nero”
and Wilhelm Kienzl’s “Der Evangelimann.”
For much of the night, the bass Paolo
Battaglia was outfitted in full Queen Elizabeth I regalia. The orchestra had parts
unrelated to the rest; everyone laughed
when, apropos of nothing, a trumpet tootled the “Ride of the Valkyries.” And the
supertitles projected several of the cut-up
synopses that Cage prepared for the first
performances:
She sells his soul to her father with the aim
of improving his impaired finances. Even her
loving relatives are shocked. They rescue him.
He retires. She agrees. Torn, they, in shame,
pardon all conspirators. He agrees to marry
her. She kills herself. He is chosen the victor.
Yet the comedy of non sequiturs gives
way to growing melancholy. Much of the
time, the voices and instruments make an
eerie murmur, like that of a subdued
crowd. At the Jahrhunderthalle, a feeling
of loneliness arose from the disconnected
meanderings of the performers, even as
the resonance of the space made them all
dreamily audible. This was the Gesamtkunstwerk dismantled, parts searching
vainly for a whole.
“Europeras 1 and 2” presents, by intention, a grand tradition at a dead end.
“Mittwoch,” by contrast, suggests a new
beginning, though where it might lead is
hazardous to guess. Both productions
were done with immaculate style and
drew capacity crowds. Each night, I saw
an odd gleam in people’s eyes, a childlike
state of alertness and surprise. Even those
who had been soaked by the trombonist
couldn’t help smiling.