While waiting for Thallo to take its course, I'll pass along a theatrical stimulus, also from the good Karlheinz.
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Luzifers Tanz
http://www.debaser.it/recensionidb/ID_30588/Karlheinz_Stockhausen_Luzifers_Tanz.htm
A gigantic human face is under the spotlights in "Luzifers Tanz", the third scene of the musical theater opera "Samstag aus Licht" (Saturday from Light). The planned ensemble consists of 70 wind instrument players (flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, etc.) and as many as 10 percussionists. The musicians sit in ten groups on six vertically overlapping levels: starting from the top, the right eyebrow and the left; the right eye and the left; the right cheek and the left; the nose; the upper lip; finally the chin (divided into two groups).
Each of these parts of the face gives rise to some dances, short instrumental episodes in which only the musicians of each group play, separated by other dances in which two or more groups play in opposition to one another; there are thus 10 dances (of the left eyebrow, of the right eyebrow, and so on) separated by 9 dances of everyone: this is the structural articulation of the piece, which lasts about 51 minutes.
But it doesn't end there: the character of Lucifer is represented on stage by a bass voice, which throughout the duration of the piece intervenes from time to time intoning a motto, and by a stilt-walker, who crosses the stage and the central corridor mimicking the bass voice on his very high stilts while teaching the face how to dance.
The music: a sulfurous sonic mass, strident in prioritizing the timbres of the brass (often with mutes) and metallic in the insistent use of percussion. The sound flows wildly and almost uninterruptedly, but during the course of the piece, three musicians emerge who perform in three solos: percussion, piccolo trumpet, and piccolo (the latter played by a black cat that at one point greets the audience by screaming, in Italian, "Salve, satanelli!").
"Luzifers Tanz" has two different endings: if performed in concerto form, it ends with a concluding tutti and has a duration of 47 minutes; if instead it is performed in a theater, the music is interrupted by an orchestra strike: the musicians stop playing and leave amidst screams and din. Why this curious little scene? Evidently a memory of what happened in 1981 during the performance of the first opera of the cycle, "Donnerstag aus Licht", when a (real) strike by the Teatro alla Scala choir prevented the performance of the third act in five out of the eight scheduled performances. A very bitter experience for Stockhausen, who with this 3-minute episode in "Luzifers Tanz" casts a light full of humor on the nature of his spirit, which is usually quite severe.
- Samstag aus Licht (1981-83) is the second opera of the cycle dedicated to the days of the week. It is articulated into four scenes plus a short instrumental introduction (Saluto del Sabato). Saturday is the day of Lucifer, portrayed on stage by a bass voice, a trombone soloist, and a stilt-walker. The opera was performed in May 1984 at the Palazzo dello Sport in Milan as a production of Teatro alla Scala. The 4-CD discography edition is published by Stockhausen-Verlag ("Luzifers Tanz" is CD no. 3 of this edition).
