Six hours with Stockhausen

Arriving for the world première of Stockhausen’s opera Mittwoch aus Licht (Wednesday from Light), we were greeted by the sight of two Bactrian camels, delightful and patient creatures, standing almost immobile for at least an hour while many visitors inspected them, before leaving in Joseph’s Amazing Camels coach. The one we saw later on stage was a pantomime camel, out of which, unzipped, a man stepped, after the animal had done an elaborate dance and been offered champagne. Zany and utopian, this is characteristic Stockhausen as I remember his works from the 1970s, before his long semi-eclipse, as people lost patience with his pretensions, his extreme prolixity, the tiresomeness of his childish sense of humour, the sheer datedness of what he was producing. The seven-instalment Licht, twice as long as Wagner’s Ring, attracted less and less interest, only the devoutest disciples hanging on after Donnerstag.

Mittwoch has attracted a good deal of media attention, especially for the camels and for the string quartet, for which each performer takes off in a separate helicopter, and varies what he or she is playing depending on the decisions the pilot takes as to what the machine is doing, and the rhythms of the motor blades.