I have always loved the idea of Karlheinz Stockhausen. That there was such a person. Someone who challenged assumptions about what 20th Century music could be, and masterminded intriguing concepts of performance and presentation. But I have fascination with modern opera so at some point I have to do my penance and review something from this titan of the European 20th century avant-garde.
So I have decided to watch the Medici. Samstag is in German and is written for wind ensemble, brass players, organ, and percussionists of varying types. I know just a little bit about the Licht cycle , but that is just enough to not want to spend time and mental bandwidth on studying up on it. My time is valuable. This opera is over 3 hours long and my strong intuition tells me that I have to have the thing on a short leash. So to save my time and to give a spontaneous, honest review I will give a blow by blow account, writing in real time as I watch.
The feeling of powerful unease draws me in. This might not be so bad after all. Some guy in a crow costume comes out and lurks around the stage a bit. Like the kind of costume you might have seen on one of the members of The Village People if hookup sex with enormous crow-men had somehow been added to the pantheon of gay fetishes.
After a few minutes Mr. Crow takes his head off the costume to reveal he is not a giant crow but a bearded dude with a bunch of eyeliner. He goes over to a grand piano and jimmies with the strings a bit before playing a few sour chords. Looking up from the keyboard, he calls in an operatic bass voice for someone named Alphonse. This Alphonse drifts onto the stage from the wings. After a time they start singing, chanting numbers out of sequence to each other. Then Alphonse hisses and sighs audibly as he fools about on the keys.
Crow puts on his head again and resumes some kind of dialogue with Alphonse. Some of this is subtitled and some is not, and when there are subtitles they are in French. The things I often tell myself when immersed in a challenging music work or live performance. The problem is that what I have described above took 40 minutes to transpire.
