Prom 11: Stockhausen’s ‘Welt Parlament’, from Mittwoch
- Date: Fri, Jul 19, 2013
- Time: 22:15 - 23:30
- Venue: London
- Location: The Royal Albert Hall
Ex Cathedra (dir. Jeffrey Skidmore)
Last summer Graham Vick’s Birmingham Opera Company transformed a disused factory in Digbeth into the fantastical world of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s epic opera Mittwoch aus ‘Licht’ with two bactrian camels, four helicopters and a wash of yellow light.
Tonight Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore revisit the babel tower of the opera’s most dazzling section, Welt-Parlament (‘World Parliament’): a multilingual a cappella tour de force of extended vocal techniques. Written 30 years earlier, Gesang der Jünglinge has been hailed as Stockhausen’s first electronic masterpiece, a mind-popping sonic translation of the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.