FULL DONNERSTAG AUS LICHT (Stockhausen) Basel 2016
MORE VIDEO FILES: VIDEO, VIDEO
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Donnerstags aus Licht
- Composer: Stockhausen Karlheinz
- Libretto: Karlheinz Stockhausen Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Oper Basel
- Recorded: October 1,2016
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Peter Tantsits, Rolf Romei, Anu Komsi, Michael Leibundgut
- Conductor: Titus Engel
- Orchestra: Sinfonieorchester Basel
- Chorus: Chor des Theater Basel
- Chorus Master: Henryk Polus
Information about the Recording
- Format: DVD
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: vk FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Donnerstag aus Licht (Thursday from Light) is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting, three acts, and a farewell, and was the first of seven to be composed for the opera cycle Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche (Light: The Seven Days of the Week). It was written between 1977 and 1980, with a libretto by the composer.
Its second act, Michaels Reise um die Erde (Michael’s Journey Around the Earth), has been performed and recorded individually.
Synopsis
Archangel Michael, Cologne Cathedral, north portal
The time and place are universal.
Donnerstags-Gruß
The Thursday Greeting is performed in the foyer as the audience is arriving.
Act 1: Michaels Jugend
The first act consists of three scenes that follow one another without a break.
Scene 1: Kindheit
In “Childhood” Michael, a son of poor parents, demonstrates exceptional gifts. His father, a schoolteacher, teaches him to pray, hunt, shoot, and perform in theatre. From his mother he learns singing and merry-making, dancing—and seduction. His parents quarrel, and a younger brother, Hermannchen, dies in infancy. The mother goes mad, attempts suicide, and is hospitalised. The father turns to drink, and goes off to war.
Scene 2: Mondeva
In the forest, Michael encounters Mondeva (Moon-Eve), half woman, half bird, and falls in love with her. As he discovers how to control her music through erotic play, in a parallel scene Michael’s mother is being killed by a doctor in an asylum.
Scene 3: Examen
Michael undergoes a triple admission examination to the conservatory. First as a singer, then as a trumpeter, and finally as a dancer, he amazes the jury, who enthusiastically admit him.
Act 2: Michaels Reise um die Erde
In the second act, Michael undertakes a journey around the world in what is essentially a trumpet concerto with orchestra, performed in a huge rotating globe set against a starry firmament. There are seven “stations” along the way, at each of which the music takes on colour from the locale: Germany, New York, Japan, Bali, India, Central Africa, and Jerusalem. Michael’s formula gradually evolves from a simple beginning form to increasingly florid extravagance, finally shattering into incoherent fragments in stations 5 and 6. When he reaches Central Africa, Michael hears a distant basset horn, and orders the globe to stop turning. Michael commands the earth to rotate in reverse as the seventh station, Jerusalem, is reached, and he begins a new process of rehabilitation in a therapeutic conversation with a double-bass player. Mondeva appears, and they perform a duet in which their melodic formulas merge and intertwine until each plays the other’s formula. Two clownish clarinet players, costumed as a pair of swallows, mock and—together with the orchestral low brass, an emblem of Lucifer—”crucify” him, after which the act ends with a musical “ascension” in which the sounds of the trumpet and basset horn circle around until they are united in a trill.)
Act 3: Michaels Heimkehr
In the third act Michael—in his threefold manifestation as tenor, trumpeter, and dancer—returns to his celestial home.
Scene 1: Festival
Michael fighting the Dragon (Bonn University, main entrance)
As the invisible choirs sing all around, he is welcomed by Eve—also in threefold form as soprano, basset hornist, and dancer—five choirs (delegates from various parts of the Michael Universe), five orchestral groups, and a background string orchestra.
“Meditation”. Eve presents Michael with a gift of three plants, and another of three compositions of light:
“First Light Composition: Chaos out of Colours”
“Second Light Composition: Suns out of Chaos”
“Third Light Composition: Chaos from Colours”
Part 1: “Moons”
Part 2: “Moons and Glassy Images”
Part 3: “Starry Sky”. The signs of the Zodiac appear, one after another, from Aquarius to Capricorn. Suddenly, an old lady steps forward and demands, “Why don’t you all come home!” The choirs answer her: “There is no ‘home’. Even angels are always on the move”. Eve presents Michael with a final gift, a terrestrial globe as a souvenir of his journey around the earth. Lucifer appears, first as a gremlin who springs out of the globe and presents Michael with his own, smaller blue globe. Michael passes it around to the choir, which infuriates the gremlin, who makes threatening gestures and summons assistance.
“Michael’s Battle with the Dragon”. Lucifer reappears in a second form, as a tap-dancing trombonist dressed as a torero with a black cape and hat, and the gremlin turns into a dragon. Michael gives battle and the dragon, wounded many times, sinks to the ground. Michael borrows the conductor’s long baton to deliver the coup de grâce. The dragon tries one last time to rise, but falls on his belly. The trombonist, too, staggers and falls on his back, legs in the air.
“Boys’ Duet”, played by two angelic soprano saxophonists.
“Argument”. A messenger arrives to announce that Lucifer is once again causing trouble. Lucifer reappears, now in triple form as a bass singer, a trombonist, and a dancer-mime, and taunts Michael, who dismisses him: “You have lost. You have corrupted your wisdom through your bitter irony, poisonous sarcasm now fills your heart. … You are no longer immortal, Lucifer! … Can’t you just once allow us to celebrate a festival in peace?” Lucifer can only go away muttering in disgust, “You fool! You fool!” as the scene ends.
Scene 2: Vision
In a process of 15 cyclical transpositions, Michael explains (in threefold appearance as singer, trumpeter, and dancer), his experience and opposition to Lucifer.
Donnerstags-Abschied
Archangel Michael as trumpeter (Christuskirche, Mannheim)
The Thursday Farewell (also called “Michael’s Farewell”) is performed outside the opera house following the performance, by five trumpeters who begin as the last scene, Vision, is concluding. They are costumed as Michael and positioned on the rooftops or on balconies surrounding the square, floodlit like statues on a tower. They each repeat one segment of the Michael formula, with long pauses between repetitions, for about 30 minutes, withdrawing at the end in the order in which their respective segments occur in the formula.