Here is my reaction to seeing the opening two performances of the five night run at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Evidently my appreciation of the musical performances and the stage direction and design was contrasting.

Mittwoch aus Licht
Karlheinz Stockhausen

Deutsche Oper Berlin September 2026

Ensemble Le Balcon,
Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin - Jeremy Bines
Streichquartett aus dem Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin

Additional Actors: Tarren Johnson, Marie Groothof, Dominic Santia, Ixchel Mendoza, Laurie Young


Music Direction Maxime Pascal
Stage Direction and Stage Design Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg
Sound Projection - Florent Derex

Music Review

The Choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin sang their scene (Welt-Parliament) with resonant beauty. For a professional Opera Chorus to accept the many rehearsals Welt-Parlament requires is remarkable, making their achievement a triumph. Fabulous voices were combined with detailed precision. In this music where Stockhausen’s composed textures of gradually brightening vowels and subtle dynamic control, listeners were provided with a perfect entrée for the upwards and airy themes of this opera. The solo vocal lines musing on the subject of love were sung with bel-canto emotion and the tenor solo (announcing that Coloratura-Eva will assume the role of conductor), as well as her earlier coloratura solo, were highlights. The memorable humorous interjection regarding the President’s illegally parked car was efficiently done, though the stuttering bass singer’s final announcement at the end was cut from this production.
The second scene of Orchester-Finalisten, inspired partly by the composer’s consideration of the latent frustration of highly trained solo instrumentalists who play simple repertoire, inspired each soloist from Le Balcon to display intense theatrical virtuosity to present such tonally restricted material. All around them flowed the vastly larger element of surreal electronic music, where sampled sounds washed around the listeners with a disconcerting range of resonances. This mysterious melange was projected well enough to magnify the apparent space in the theatre to a surreal degree. No wonder Stockhausen called this electronic element (repeated in the foyer afterwards as Mittwoch’s Abshied) “dream spaces”. I experienced the unimaginable human potential contrasted with each soloist’s present limitations. That is a metaphor which the composer had used when commenting that he longed to compose beyond his earthly resources. The score indicates that each soloist should fly into the scene, (here they calmly walked on stage in order), and any impression of flight during the solos was left to the video images behind. Ror example during the oboe solo a perspective high above cathedral turrets was achieved. The Balcon soloists performed with virtuosity, including the horn player who is always off-stage. The mummified percussionist’s single gong stroke was dramatised broadly, following which the soloists made their slow final exit offstage with the glorious polyphony of every solo played and expressed simultaneously. No time was available for applause as the screens immediately descended into view, ready for the Helicopter Quartet. Expectant whispers throughout the audience suggested the anticipation was widespread.
Helicopter String Quartet was played fearlessly, with the rotor blades themselves projected prominently in the mix. The music began with a surprisingly long and tense crescendo of turbines before the ascent. I agree that the ‘Moderation’ interviews before and after this scene no longer need to be given in every staged performance, and the composer’s spoken word introduction from 1995 included here was touching as well as dramatic. The soloists from the Orchestra of Deutsche Oper Berlin played with vigour, projecting most of their accented melodies clearly amidst the wild tremolando glissandi. Vocalisations of the numbers (from Stockhausen’s Luzifer Formula) were passed between players loudly, and rose to a committed climax before the descent began. This quartet’s facial expressions on camera were kept serious and focussed throughout; very much in keeping with the serious attitude sustained by all throughout this production. The Berlin audience loudly applauded and cheered the performance afterwards. The pre-filmed flight took less of a technical risk than the five live performances of Birmingham 2012, but the experience in the auditorium was of course just the same, as if the helicopters were actually overhead.
Scene 4: Michaelion is situated at a galactic centre, far from earth and far in the future. Lighting spots and abstract video attempted to make the scene unearthly, but the sand and stone obelisk still dominated the stage. The singing of Luzikamel, was seen in synch with the movement of the camel’s mouth for those with good eyesight, and fine bravura trombone playing made the rather static “bullfight” at least musically dramatic. The many microphones used by singers, and instrumentalists, demand an enormous sensitivity for skilled live sound balance, and already on the second night the sound projection was better than on the opening night. On Sunday, at the section of “Horst Menschen” (where the singers’ voices reposition to prominently surround the audience), it was appreciated that greater restraint and control of that tutti was achieved. The singers and instrumentalists of Le Balcon performed this highly difficult music extremely well, with each galactic delegate’s contribution accompanied by humorous sound-making devices, all clear and enjoyable while following the surtitles emphasising the delegate’s messages above the stage. The wind trio rotating around the Operator provided a melodic delight.
The part of The Operator has previously been performed by musicians with a specialist expertise in extended vocal techniques, each having previously worked with the composer himself. The new singer in this role gave a rather different account of the improvisations and transformations. The danger of using live radio broadcasts as well as prerecorded shortwave signals in this piece (as well as Mantra, Spiral, etc also by Stockhausen) allowed the appearance of recognisable news broadcasts and voices from time to time. Of course a news bulletin from today detracts from the futuristic scene abruptly, but it also makes a connection with the audience in a surprising way. A matter of taste surely.

Production Design

After the previous World Premiere staging in Birmingham 2012 at a disused factory, where the spatial requirements of each scene were possible following Stockhausen’s design, this German production of 2026 was given in a traditional opera house.
The Deutsche Oper Berlin auditorium has limitations for the extraordinary projection of sound as composed here, (particularly unsuitable for a cubic octophonic projection of the scene Orchester Finalisten, where Stockhausen precisely rotates his music via six walls of sound, including above and below). But in a typical theatre, the lighting, video backdrops and a large stage area are resources that can provide all that is needed for a more explicit mis-en-scene that Argyle Works couldn’t attempt in 2012. Pragmatically the rehearsals and five performances of Mittwoch aus Licht at Deutsche Oper also had to alternate with other opera productions.
It is to my mind a joy of opera production that the Director and design team can find creative ways to respond to the music and libretto of each work in unexpected ways. This creativity can be inspired by the piece itself, or at least by some element or theme within it. For this production it was very difficult to find a mutual relationship between the score’s synopsis and the design decisions. I can only suspect there was a degree of artistic antipathy to Stockhausen’s idiosyncratic embrace of the new, so Kennedy and Selg decided to clip Stockhausen’s wings somewhat. Perhaps ancient elements would have been added to whichever opera the stage team had been chosen to direct, as their ongoing work is to explore beauty using old ritual. Apparently the design team’s aim was not to create any new cultural paradigm in the manner of Stockhausen.
Simply put; where Stockhausen abruptly relocates his characters/musicians to higher and higher places with each new scene, (i.e. the tops of a skyscraper, dreams of flying, ascent into the sky, and intergalactic arrival), this particular staging fought against such ascendant progression. It imposed a very earthbound location with a stereotypically ancient appearance. All action was centred around a hefty, almost Neolithic stone obelisk which in turn was surrounded by raked sand. The themes of Mittwoch aus Licht show humanity moving upwards to the stars, so such a reductive and conservative staging is bewildering to my mind. I can only admit that the contrast of approaches between composed music and stage direction was thought provoking, maybe deliberately so.
At the Deutsche Oper Berlin five additional actors elegantly played out a somewhat cliched ritual as witness to the drama. Watching such deferential reverence from these actors, I was left considering who they might represent, and concluded that it certainly wasn’t any free thinking opera audience!
Video was used in place of backdrops, particularly in the second and final scenes. The video was clearly AI tooled, to allow a great deal of variety and ‘content’. The film makers must have realised that what they produced displayed many of the aspects of familiar and banal AI imagery, including tedious multiplicity, repeated footage, and video game-like graphics, with an inconsistent approach to any synchronisation to the music. If this lack of originality and paucity of finesse was a deliberate statement by the artists, then it wasn’t worthy of this production. In Scene 2 (Orchester Finalisten) the music creates a separate surreal dream-space for each soloist, formed of real-world sounds juxtaposed and pitch-shifted electronically by the composer. Within the video footage, a few of the images matched the sounds, while others looped well beyond the moments where they had any musical reference. In Scene 4 (Michaelion) there were endless corridors of abstract graphics to distract from the drama, (and never a starry firmament). Late in the scene a move towards scrolling images of the composer’s detailed formal planning for the piece, coinciding with the self-references Stockhausen makes in his libretto, so this illustration made some logical sense.

Stockhausen, Susanne Kennedy and Ritual

The specific movements and spacing of instrumentalists has often been remarked as ‘ritualistic’ in Stockhausen’s compositions, even from quite early works such as Mikrophonie I. By the time Mittwoch aus Licht was written the theatrical aims of each composition, are very prominent. The entries onto stage, instrumentalist’s movements, hand gestures, signs, symbols and quasi religious elements in some Stockhausen (including Mittwoch aus Licht) are characteristic. New, often surreal musical forms, accompanied by extended performance practice became an eccentric aesthetic delight in Stockhausen’s music that helps focus and direct our appreciation of detail and form.
The ritual elements that Kennedy and Selg added to this staging of Mittwoch aus Licht, no doubt taken carefully from many world cultures and ceremonies, appeared very different in purpose. It is no exaggeration that such ritual movements seem stereotypical and even satirical when performed alongside the separately composed actions of Stockhausen’s score. Ecstatic shaking, prostrations, kneeling, praying, moulding clay etc (added by the stage director) are not at all original, but seemed more like the casual “primitivism” performed by extras in old films; such as King Kong or Indiana Jones.
Perhaps the stage director and designer’s aim was one of injecting ancient ritual into this opera to unify, enrich and beautify the whole, (“We don’t even go to church anymore” - Susanne Kennedy). I instead experienced a dysfunctional clash of aesthetics, with Stockhausen and Kennedy pulling in diametrically opposite directions. One looking to the future and the other to the past.
The stage designer in Berlin created a large monolithic centrepiece, perhaps an altar, or a mysterious stone artefact, which anchored the four scenes to a common location regardless of the explicit changes of scene. The raked sand spoke of an ancient unchanging world, and the regular use of a single eye motif centre-stage gave a particularly unwelcome ‘eye of God’ Masonic suggestion, which has little relevance to this particular episode of Licht. There are many possibilities to bring four non-narrative scenes together within the design, but imposing a common location was surely a mis-step for the spatially progressive Mittwoch aus Licht.
The most effective elements of the staging in Berlin included the extra entry of the World Parliamentarians before scene one, when they processed in columns around the space and aisles to the accompaniment of the ending foyer electronic music ‘Mittwochs Gruss’. The singers then entered the stage once again, as written in the score, singing polyrhythmically and holding electronic metronomes for their a-capella scene. Although the choir does represent the diversity of humanity; (now collaborating), the uniform masks and costumes blended more with the parallel rituals of the five actors added by Susanne Kennedy. I can’t deny the riveting stage presence that this procession made preparing for the opening scene, but from here on the added actors and the composed scenes mostly went their separate ways.
The third scene; Helicopter String Quartet, removed the element of spoken ‘moderation’ at either end, allowing for a dramatic inclusion of the late composer’s voice and his best wishes from that Dutch premiere in 1995. The four screens descended and even floated up and down during the flight, with some additional strobing and smoke effects adding to the energy of the scene. The central screen behind the stage provided another view of the flight, irritatingly blocked by the central obelisk of course, but the overall scene was well done.
I am delighted to hear that the production was filmed by David Daurier, enabling the seven operas of Licht of Le Balcon’s cycle to be seen and heard by more people.

Thanks, Bernard, for sharing your detailed review of the Berlin performance of Mittwoch. I don’t agree with every single point, but I certainly recognize many of your observations.
To make the performance a bit more vivid visually, I will add a few photos to the notes I made during my train journey to Rotterdam, the day after the performance of Saturday 27th of September.

Gruß
Walking from my hotel to the Deutsche Oper Berlin I promise myself to focus on this production of Mittwoch, not judging, not comparing to the Birmingham performance. I just jump into this production. I will not attend the introduction, not buy the program in order to experience the opera without prejudice.
As soon as I enter the foyer the Gruß starts. I am glad to find the last available armchair, being a bit tired after my 35 km bike ride around the city. Other early visitors are making themselves comfortable on the floor. I push away the nice images of Birmingham, we all lying or sitting on mattresses on the floor.
The sound quality in the foyer is perfect, nicely combined with the soft conversations from the few who do what you are supposed to do in the foyer: making contact with each other.
At ten to six PM I start to climb to my seat at the 2e Rang last row. I cannot remember why the hell I bought this cheapest seat, but it was really a nice location: full sight on the stage, plenty of room to stretch my legs.