Mittwoch aus Licht

In August I was asked by Birmingham Opera to take the production photographs for Mittwoch aus Licht at the Argyle Works in Birmingham.

Mittwoch aus Licht is German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's last piece of work, and it is truly like nothing else I have ever seen performed. Staged in four main parts, one of the acts involves four members of a string quartet going up in four separate helicopters and playing a synchronized polyphonic composition in time to the sounds of the rotor blades. The first part, which was my favourite, was called Welt-Parlament (World Parliament) and requires opera singers to sit atop very high yellow chairs and 'debate in unknown languages'.

The second scene is the Orchester-Finalisten (Orchestra Finalists) where eleven instrumentalists are suspended in the air.

The musician Debs White suspended with her violin.

This image gives a better idea of the scale of the show. The audience were asked to lay down on padded mats, the orchestra suspended above them and various musicians and actors moved between them.

The fourth section is called Michaelion and has three sub scenes, one of which is Luzikamel, in which a Bactrian camel (or rather two people dressed as one) arrives with a trombonist. I was in Birmingham for two days and the opera lasts almost six hours. There isn't the space to show you too many of my photos, but here are a few other images, including the two genuine-real-life bactrian camels that came to the opera. Please click on the thumbnails to see larger images.