Simply stated the Stockhausen opera last night at Avery Fisher, “Michaels Reise Um Erde”, for me was the most amazing and best contemporary opera experience ever - and one of best of any opera. All the more so in that there were no singers, just instrumentalists as the soloists. I have never sat in an audience of any music where its members were so gripped and silent – not a cough or paper rattle to be heard.

The success of the performance was more than just Stockhausen's, but the synergy of MusikFabrik (who by the way have recreated the entirety of Harry Partch’s instrument collection so that his work can be performed and extended in Europe) and La Fura Dels Baus, the Spanish multimedia team. A scrim wrapped in front of the entirety of the Avery Fisher stage, projected on it throughout the show an abstraction of the mythic tale being told - with musicians flying through the 3-dimensional space and the music itself being reechoed and positioned through the acoustics of the hall. (Probably the only contemporary piece I would want to see again immediately - to grasp all that I may have missed on every level in one viewing.) The visual storytelling was so compelling that the music was lost in its fabric – but “lost” in the best sense of the word. Stockhausen’s thorny writing was now part of the telling of the greater tale. What would have been an interesting music experience until itself was now a film score - but one in which the music was the narrative, not an emotional underpinning as would be the case in typical cinema. Abstract yet concrete, each audience member filling in their own details of meaning – doing exactly what great art should do – simultaneously touching both the universal and the specific. A giant three-dimensional Imax experience but with all the vibrancy and immediacy of live performance. I kept saying to myself: this is just like a Superman movie, but so much better. It began with transcendence and did not have to reach for it. I can’t wait for the sequel.

Demetrius Spaneas, TJ Devadatta Best and 2 others


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