Karlheinz Stockhausen

Donnerstag aus Licht

Archive 2021
Opera
Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris
novembernov 15

© © Meng Phu ©

Music, Libretto,dances, stage action and gestures, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Musical direction, Maxime Pascal
Stage direction, Benjamin Lazar

Soloists
Damien Bigourdan, ténor, Michaël
Pia Davila, soprano, Eva
Damien Pass, basse, Lucifer
Henri Deléger, trompette, Michaël
Iris Zerdoud, cor de basset, Eva
Mathieu Adam, trombone, Lucifer
Emmanuelle Grach, danse, Michaël
Suzanne Meyer, danse, Eva
Jamil Attar, danse, Lucifer
Alphonse Cemin, piano, l’accompagnateur de Michaël
Alice Caubit, Ghislain Roffat, clarinettes, le couple clownesque d’hirondelles
Benoit Coutris, trombone
Maxime Morel, tuba

Computer music, Augustin Muller
Sound Projection, Florent Derex
Vocal conductor, Alain Muller
Sets and costumes, Adeline Caron
Costumes assistant, Jeanne Lébène
Assistant director, Elizabeth Calleo
Dance, Emmanuelle Grach
Video, Yann Chapotel
Video control, Gaëtan Besnard
Lighting, Christophe Naillet
Production management, Myrtille Debièvre and Cédric Joder
Make-up, Mathilde Benmoussa
Make-up and haidressing assistant, Corine Tasso, Carole Ortega
Surittles, Lili Gomond
Sound management, Joan Cunha
Video and lighting, Aurélie Martin
Orchestra management, Marie Bailly, N. N.

Le Balcon, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, the Philharmonie de Paris and the Festival d’Automne à Paris
are coproducers of the opera.
Adaptation of the 2018 production by the Opéra Comique and Le Balcon.

––––––
Duration: 2 hours plus intermission
Performance in German, supertitles in French

With Thursday from Light, Karlheinz Stockhausen embarked on a vast cycle of seven operas, Licht (Light), ultimately devoting twenty-five years of his life to the venture. Sounds operate in a powerful spiral movement, on the scale of the stars, while human involvement is for rhythm, forming an appeal to stellar mystical harmony.

Thursday from Light may be seen as an autobiography. Using the name of Michael, Stockhausen tells his own story, starting in Act I with his unhappy childhood in Germany, first under the Nazis, and then after the war. His father, a primary school teacher, served in the army and went missing on the front in Hungary; and he lost his mother to euthanasia, the plight of so many mental patients under the Third Reich.
In the opera, Michael, the orphan, has to sit for an entrance exam to enroll at music school. Act II tells the tale of Michael’s journey around the earth, his role being played by the solo trumpet, while the orchestra is a world of its own, in movement and with the comic comings and goings of swallows portrayed by two clarinets. By the end of the seventh and final stage on his peregrinations, Michael has returned, the reappearance being expressed in Act III when invisible choirs sing texts written between the Old and the New Testament. Michael has come to extol the virtues of peace. One year before the world première of Thursday from Light in Milan, Stockhausen was asked what he thought happiness on earth might be. His answer: “A perfect work of music.”

See also

Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris
octoberoct 26

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Donnerstag aus Licht – Acte 3

OperaMusic
Buy tickets

Donnerstag (Thursday), the first opera of the Licht (Light) cycle, to which Karlheinz Stockhausen devoted twenty-five years of his life, is the day of Archangel Michael, his youth, journey around the earth and his return. It is also an autobiographical moment in time, overwhelmingly so, in a spiral that leads to the stars and the harmony of the universe.

In the same place

Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris
octoberoct 11

Clara Iannotta
echo from afar (II) ; They left us grief-trees wailing at the wall ; glass and stone ; a stir among the stars, a making way

Music Portrait
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What are the relationships between a spider's growth, the sound experience of radiotherapy and the lights and clicking sounds of old-fashioned slide viewers? The work of Clara Iannotta, of which this concert offers a journey through its recent years, is a mode of self-knowledge, or an autobiography in which sound and body are intimately linked.
Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris
octoberoct 26

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Donnerstag aus Licht – Acte 3

OperaMusic
Buy tickets

Donnerstag (Thursday), the first opera of the Licht (Light) cycle, to which Karlheinz Stockhausen devoted twenty-five years of his life, is the day of Archangel Michael, his youth, journey around the earth and his return. It is also an autobiographical moment in time, overwhelmingly so, in a spiral that leads to the stars and the harmony of the universe.
Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris
novembernov 25

Heiner Goebbels
A House of Call – My Imaginary Notebook

Music
Buy tickets

A House of Call, a vast, lavishing, Babylonian imaginary notebook of Heiner Goebbels' travels around the world, is a sum total of sounds, styles, languages, cultures and voices. It brings us the voices of the living and the dead, recorded over the course of just over a century. Its orchestra responds to the grains of these voices, thereby renewing a centuries-old tradition of responsorial art.