Mittwoch aus Licht, at Argyle Works, Birmingham – Seven magazine review

The much-hyped world premiere of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht by Birmingham Opera Company was a hit-and-miss affair

Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht, performed by Birmingham Opera Company.
Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht, performed by Birmingham Opera Company. Credit: Photo: Helen Maybanks

From Milan’s La Scala to a disused chemical works in Birmingham hardly sounds like a success story, but there were reasons to celebrate as the latter hosted the belated world premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht.

For a long time it had looked as if his mammoth seven-opera Licht cycle (begun in Milan in 1981) would never be completed, and the composer’s death in 2007 made the likelihood of another big Stockhausen “happening” seem even more remote. So it was hardly surprising to see the faithful and just plain curious happily lying and squatting on a factory floor for six hours to witness this historic event.

Licht (“Light”) is the magnum opus of a bonkers/visionary composer (delete according to taste) who saw himself as a channel for signals from the entire universe.

The main preoccupations of his intergalactic ego were music and religion, and they come together here in “cosmic theatre”, with each opera named for a day of the week. The three principal characters – Eve, Michael and Lucifer – are represented in triplicate, by a singer, dancer and musical instrument.

With funding from the London 2012 Festival, Graham Vick’s brave Birmingham Opera Company has succeeded where all others have failed in staging all the complex component parts of Wednesday from Light in one evening.

But ironically the highlights were mostly musical (under the direction of Kathinka Pasveer), not least the ethereal World Parliament scene sung by the choir Ex Cathedra perched high in an oval of umpires’ chairs. It’s hard to care much about a plot that calls for a planet-defecating pantomime camel.

Even the famous Helicopter String Quartet, which saw each member of the Elysian Quartet take to the sky in a chopper, seemed anticlimactic. But for those still curious, the performance of this segment is available here on the Arts Council’s special 2012 website.

This article also appeared in SEVEN magazine, free with the Sunday Telegraph.

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