Opera Review: Twisting, Turning Through the Never

Lincoln Center Festival presents Michaels Reise um die Erde.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Archangel Michael (trumpeter Marco Blaauw) solos over New York in Michaels Reise um die Erde.
Image © 2013 La Fura dels Baus.

It was Saturday night, and  Avery Fisher Hall was in darkness, apart from a black-light glow illuminating a curtain concealing the massive stage. This was the setting for the North American premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Michaels Reise um die Erde ("Michael's Journey Around the World.") This was the third and final performance of the work (itself a component of Stockhausen's week-long mega-opera Licht) at this year's Lincoln Center Festival. The music was by Ensemble musikFabrik, and the staging by Carlus Padrissa from Catalan theater group La Fura dels Baus.

Concert Review: The Cult of Light

The Park Avenue Armory presents Stockhausen's Oktophonie.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This didn't actually happen on Saturday.
The late Karlheinz Stockhausen. © Stockhausen-Verlag

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seven-part opera cycle Licht is regarded as one of the most important, possibly unperformable  monster works produced in the last decades of the composer’s life. Perhaps recognizing the difficulty of getting a seven-day 29-hour opera performed, Stockhausen made his work "modular", enabling sections of Licht to be broken out and played for an audience of less fortitude.