Karlheinz Stockhausen, Samstag aus Licht (1984)

Soooo...between 1977 and 2003, Stockhausen wrote this seven-opera cycle called Licht--each named for a day of the week and, if I understand correctly, somehow dealing with the mythological/religious characters associated with the days. Who can say? It's supposed to be twenty-nine hours in total, but if that's the case, this Saturday installment must be an outlier, clocking in at only three and a quarter hours.  These things are sometimes performed, but I believe this is the only one that exists publicly on video--exclusive to Medici, it appears.

Let me try to describe this, although I will fail: we start with an overture, which is the most prominently "musical" thing here. Lotta brass and atonality. In the first act, Lucifer summons his musician, who plays on the piano while he and Lucifer both take it in turn to...count, mostly, up and down. At the end, Lucifer dies, maybe. The second act consists mostly of a single Flautist playing, with background chirps and things, while numbers appear on a background screen and slowly count up to twenty-four, with little animations between. There's a dancer also. I'm told this is meant to be a kind of resurrection ceremony, because in the third act, hey, Lucifer's back. This consists, basically, of him declaring it to be the dance of various facial features (eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, nose, tongue, &c); as he declares each one, it appears in the background, creating a kind of demonic face. More subdued atonality in the background. The final act takes place in a church (like, an actual church, with the audience in pews--this thing apparently involves a certain amount of moving around). Ambient background music with low chanting, as priests sing in praise of the virtues. In the...climax?...we go outside the church, where the crowd watches as the priests in turn lift coconuts over their heads and smash them down onto the concrete. I daresay they have their reasons.

Well, this is definitely what it is. Here are things I liked about it: the demon head in the third act is kinda cool. Damien Pass puts in a very committed performance as Lucifer. And...I guess that's all, and yeah, you--I, anyway--always feel self-conscious about disliking something like this that a lot of people clearly love, because argh I probably just don't understand it I'm not sophisticated enough. Oh noes! But I gotta say: to me, it all come across as so much punishingly avant-garde tedium. And you know me; I LIKE a lot of avant-garde stuff that other people would dismiss in similar terms. But I dunno: I like a wide range of opera, but I have to think that if you like this, you like the form for different reasons than I do. Which is okay, let a thousand flowers bloom, but the idea of someone listening to the music--which you CAN do, though it's way out of print--boggles my mind.  And HOW is that thing with the coconuts not incredibly silly?  Somebody tell me!  Dammit, I was thinking throughout, I wish I were listening to Verdi now. Or Cavalli. Or, really, anyone making actually goddamn music--or barring that, anyone telling an actual story.  The closest thing I've seen to this in terms of experimentalism is Einstein on the Beach, but at least there there's some real music.  Dammit.  I'm always glad to see new kinds of things, but it would be safe to call me Not A Fan of this.

Would I listen to another Licht opera, given the chance? Yeah, probably, if I didn't have to pay for it, just because I don't know if you can get a good idea for the whole just from one single part. Would I see ALL of the Licht operas, given the chance? Jesus Christ, man, that's a hell of an ask. I suppose it's at least possible that if I embarked on that journey, at some point I would start to appreciate them more. But I am, let's say, not enthused by the idea--and this coming from someone who read all of Proust just (okay, not "just," but to a substantial degree) to say he'd done it.