It was the first time the opera had been performed in its entirety, and tickets for the four days it was on had sold out almost as soon as they were released. I have to thank Viv's persistence that we got tickets at all, despite having signed up for the mailing list ages ago.
Unlike the pleasant and amiable John Cage Stockhausen's strange and erratic personality make it often very difficult to know if he is being funny, derisive or just barking mad.
I found this performance surprisingly funny, exhilarating and at times almost poignant. It lasted something like eight hours and only the final part -after the camel had sung- seemed to drag, until it finally petered out into something of a fashionable non-ending. The opera is best know for the Helicopter Quartet and though I would like to have been able to see the helicopters circling overhead we had to make do with the video relays.
You can watch a recording of it, and the Guardian review, here.
I came away wondering what Stockhausen would have made of the performance and the carnival atmosphere of the whole opera. I decided that though he would have approved of the quality of the sound, video and the technical side of things - and the Camel! - I think he would have been less pleased with some of the low tech solutions to problems presented in the libretto. It would be interesting to see a different director tackling the opera.
Though I would like a long break before seeing the whole thing again. In my opinion eight hours is a long time for any opera.
Despite the fact that there were those so enamoured they had attended all four performances.
I also found it strange to feel the music now sounded so conventional, even accessible. Something that would have seemed almost unimaginable in the 1950s and early 60s. Nevertheless some of the critics still seemed to miss the point and continued to try and detach the music from the performance and environment; so a review of the Helicopter Quartet talked only of the music without even mentioning the helicopters themselves thus making the piece totally meaningless. The varying sounds of the rotors being as essential to the work as the other musical instruments.
So what small reservations I had did not detract in any way from the enjoyment of such and extraordinary event, the performance and music. Even after eight hours the audience were still smiling and left humming some of the most catchy numbers.
Stockhausen, who'd have thought it?