Talk:Sonntag aus Licht

Roles

Should we add a roles table? I know that's a big requirement for opera articles. I mocked one up:

(Sonntag does not employ soloists in traditional dramatic roles. )

Performer	Premiere cast, 9/10 April 2011
Lichter-Wasser
Musical Direction—	Peter Rundel
Soprano	Anna Palimina
Tenor	Hubert Mayer
Synthesizer	Ulrich Löffler
Sound Projection	Paul Jeukendrup
Orchestra	musikFabrik
Engel-Prozessionen
Soprano	Csilla Csövári
Alto	Noa Frenkel
Tenor	Alexander Mayr
Bass	Michael Leibundgut
Choir	Cappella Amsterdam/ Choir of the Opera Cologne ("Tutti Choir"), direction: James Wood
Licht-Bilder
Tenor	Hubert Mayer
Trumpet	Marco Blaauw
Flute	Chloé L'Abbé
Basset-horn	Fie Schouten
Synthesizer	Benjamin Kobler
Sound Projection	Kathinka Pasveer
Düfte-Zeichen
High Soprano	Csilla Csövári
Tenor	Hubert Mayer
Soprano	Maike Raschke
High Tenor	Alexander Mayr
Baritone	Jonathan de la Paz Zaens
Bass	Michael Leibundgut
Alto	Noa Frenkel
Boy	Boy of the Choir Academy Dortmund
Synthesizer	Benjamin Kobler
Sound Projection	Kathinka Pasveer
Hoch-Zeiten für Chor (5-track tape projection)
Chorus	Choir of the WDR (taped)
Sound Projection	Kathinka Pasveer
Hoch-Zeiten fur Orchester (5-track tape projection)
Orchestra	musikFabrik
Sound Projection	Paul Jeukendrup
Sonntags-Abschied (5-track tape projection)
Synthesizer I	Marc Maes
Synthesizer II	Frank Gutschmidt
Synthesizer III	Fabrizio Rosso
Synthesizer IV	Benjamin Kobler
Synthesizer V	Antonio Pérez Abellán
Sound Projection	Kathinka Pasveer

Trumpetrep (talk) 03:42, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I have a mockup that looks remarkably like this one. Thanks for making the effort, though. I shall compare your version with mine before adding it.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:58, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I had been struggling to avoid breaking up the cast scene-by-scene, in order to avoid having to repeat Hubert Mayer, Benjamin Kobler, Kathinka Pasveer, and Csilla Csövári so many times. However, there does not seem to be a graceful way of doing this, so let us keep the repetitions.

There are a few small matters to clear up here, though. First, it is not quite entirely true that Sonntag never employs soloists in traditional dramatic roles. In Lichter-Wasser, Licht-Bilder, and Düfte-Zeichen the singing roles are quite traditional, for example, and the use of soloists in the choir in Engel-Prozessionen is not so unusual, either. Second, it seems to me that the characters of Michael, Eve, and Lucifer should be named where they clearly appear, but this introduces a problem, since they often appear in duplicate or even triplicate (in Düfte-Zeichen, for example, where Eve is performed by high soprano, soprano, and alto). This is certainly a non-traditional aspect of the presentation, as is the use of instrumentalists to portray characters. In Licht-Bilder, for example, Michael is not only the tenor singer, but also the trumpeter (as is the case also in Donnerstag), and Eve is performed by flute/alto flute and basset horn. Some smaller issues: the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir needs adding to the forces in Engel-Prozessionen, the conductors should all be named (not just James Wood for the choirs), the orchestra in Hoch-Zeiten was physically present (not a "five-track tape projection", which I presume is a copying error), and Kathinka Pasveer was listed in the programme under musical direction along with Peter Rundel.

I think the ballet should also be added to the cast, since they were an extremely important part of Hoch-Zeiten für Chor, and a major presence in Düfte-Zeichen, as well as contributing in smaller ways to Lichter-Wasser, Engel-Prozessionen, and Licht-Bilder. The only scene in which they were entirely absent was Hoch-Zeiten für Orchester. This poses two problems, however. The first is that they are listed in the programme book simply as "Dance Ensemble" (with a list of all the dancers' names), and the second is that they will need to be listed five separate times. Should not the choreographers also be listed?

Finally, I am not very familiar with Wikipedia standards for these opera-cast tables. Preumably the stage designer, artistic conception, dramaturgist, costume designer, videographer, lighting director, etc. are not normally included in the table but, then, why is the musical director?. Presumably the names of groups, such as Urano and La Fura dels Baus, would also go wherever the production credits belong. In this case, it is a very long list!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:19, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

'Copying' is the operative word here. I transcribed this from the brochure for the production, and making it fit into the Wikipedia standards was difficult, hence the disclaimer. From what I've seen, the roles table is just for the roles of the opera, and should include the premiere cast. I included the information about the music directors and the performers because it seemed easier to remove things, if necessary, while it simultaneously centralized a great deal of information. At a glance, it clarifies that for the reader that Sonntag is not by any means a straightforward production.

Düfte-Zeichen is a great example, where the disclaimer made sense to me. Eve is somewhat clearly presented, and the boy is clearly supposed to be Michael, but how do you list the others? As 'Thursday' or 'Wednesday'? All that being said, I think whatever you decide will be just fine. Trumpetrep (talk) 01:29, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

All the singers' roles are perfectly clear: two Lucifers (bass and baritone), three Eves (high soprano, soprano, alto), and three Michaels (high tenor, tenor, boy soprano). This is clear enough from the days in which they sing, and it was underlined by the costuming in the Cologne production. Multiple simultaneous representations are also found in Licht-Bilder, and were first employed in Donnerstag aus Licht (singer + instrumentalist + dancer), and subsequently in Montag (triple sopranos for Eve in act 1; singer + actor for Lucifer as Luci-octopus, etc.).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Were the singers' roles made perfectly clear by the production itself? Because I think that is a separate piece from the score itself, where the roles are not clear. In his synopses, Stockhausen always refers to performers by their roles. For instance, when the trumpeter emerges in Lucifers Tanz, the synopsis always refers to him as Michael.

In the score for Düfte-Zeichen, the only performer clearly referred to by a character's name is the boy: "She (alto) calls the boy MICHAEL out of the audience to her..." Perhaps there is some other documentation that Stockhausen intended the performers in these scenes to portray his characters, but that would mark a major departure from the way he wrote about the rest of Licht in his CD booklets and scores.

If the roles in Düfte-Zeichen were delineated by the musikFabrik production, that is one thing. From what I read, they also portrayed the 'Luziferium', which is a great idea for a production, but to understand it as a part of the scenic action of Sonntag would be a mistake, no? Again, I defer to your judgment on all of these questions, as you are much more knowledgeable than I am on the subject. These are questions I've had for some time. In 2009, when I originally posed the question to Marco of whether or not the trumpet in Licht-Bilder is Michael, he did not know. I'd imagine he would say that it is now, after this production. But is that because of Stockhausen or the production directors? Trumpetrep (talk) 17:49, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I do see the distinction you are making. The characters are not named in the score but, yes, the production made their identities abundantly clear (just as the symbols specified in the score imply). The content of the texts of the individual arias, duets, and the trio also identify them with the days of Eve, Michael + Lucifer, M + E + L, Michael, etc. If you go through the slideshow of 50 images (about half of which are from Düfte-Zeichen) here:

http://www.koeln.de/koeln/stockhausenoper_sonntag__begeistert_koelner_461193.html

you will see that each singer has either the Michael, Lucifer, or Eve symbol blazoned on a sort of cowhide-cloak, and also painted on the singer's face. Colours of both costumes and lighting also generally correspond, though the baritone's (Jonathan de la Paz Zaens) cowhide cloak was yellow for Wednesday, and the high tenor's sleeves were red for Tuesday. The production, BTW, was not by musikFabrik, who supplied many of the instrumentalists, but rather by La Fura dels Baus. If they included a representation of the Luziferium (which should have a large earth-globe with percussion instrument embedded in it), it eluded my eyes entirely. Perhaps it was, as the sketches and Stockhausen's interviews specify, at a distant underground location elsewhere in Cologne. Further indications may be included in the materials in both Thomas Ulrich's small programme book (designated Ulrich 2011 in the list of References), or in the larger programme book published by the Stockhausen-Stiftung (Stockhausen 2011). I do not have these handy at the moment.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:44, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Just a brief remark to the formal structure of such a table: the markup character "!" should only be used for table headings, not for every single line. Instead of repeating the modified table here, I changed it above. Further changes could be made to shorten it a bit by combining the five synthesizers, e.g.:

Sonntags-Abschied (5-track tape projection)
Synthesizers I to V—	Marc Maes, Frank Gutschmidt, Fabrizio Rosso, Benjamin Kobler, Antonio Pérez Abellán
Sound Projection	Kathinka Pasveer

While it is true that artists other than conductor and singers are not normally mentioned in these tables but in some other section, I think that for contemporary operas this is increasingly awkward and unjustified. I've done that myself, e.g. in Séance on a Wet Afternoon, Bliss, Anna Nicole. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:41, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Michael. I have now added the cast table, per this discussion. This includes role names, since Eve and Michael are actually named in the scores and in the texts of some scenes (for example, the contralto in Düfte-Zeichen is addressed as "Eve" by the other singers), and I have ventured to add character names in brackets where the roles are very plain (either from text content or costuming, etc. in the premiere production), as discussed above.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:25, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It might be helpful just to include an explanatory note about the difference between 'Eve' and '(Eve)' in the table.Trumpetrep (talk) 02:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, yes, I see what you mean. The reader is bound to wonder what is going on there. I'll try to think of a way of doing this without making the annotation too laboured.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:45, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Synopsis v. Development

While the scenes can't really be synopsized in a traditional way, I still think it would be helpful to separate out basic synopsis information from the development of the various scenes. Information like the commissioning history of each scene could go into a separate development section, while a basic description of what happens in each scene goes into the synopsis section. Trumpetrep (talk) 03:42, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, of course. I threw a lot of information more or less at random into the "synopsis" section. There needs to be a "history" section, and then an "analysis" section. That is the purpose of collecting together the References first, in order to prepare the ground.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:58, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Critical Reception

Should we add critical reactions from the spate of reviews?Trumpetrep (talk) 03:37, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. It seemed to me that a few days should be allowed to collect the critical reactions and sort them out. The ones I have seen so far (which are included in the list of sources) are mostly German, but I expect to see reactions from further afield shortly. I take it from your interest that you, too, attended the Cologne premiere last weekend. I'm sorry to have missed meeting you there.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:58, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

No, I didn't go! I would have reached out in advance, if I had. The only English reviews I've seen have been in the Financial Times and the Washington post:

[1] [2]Trumpetrep (talk) 04:03, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Too bad. There are still performances throughout this month and May 1st. The Washington Post review was quoted in anticipation by one German review. I've been looking for it for two days now—thanks for the link, now that it has finally been published. The Japanese reviews will probably take a little longer for me to absorb. Nevertheless, most of the German reviews I have read (seven so far, I think) have been a bit cautious in expressing an opinion. Understandable, perhaps, given the complexity of both the work and of the production.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:24, 16 April 2011 (UTC)