Le Balcon

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Montag aus Licht, opera in a greeting, three acts and a farewell

In the vast Licht (Light) cycle, to which Karlheinz Stockhausen devoted twenty-five years of his life, Monday is the day of Eve. A sumptuous, poetic “musical ceremony of veneration of the mother”, the work celebrates the fertility, engendering and perpetual rebirth of humanity, the child and, through the child, the renewed beauty of the universe.

Composed for a full orchestra, Lundi is part of the spiral that is Licht, a symbol of growth and continuity between the here below and the hereafter, in a powerful movement of spiritual elevation. Water, source of life, matrix liquid, amniotic, infiltrates in many forms: sea, rain, hail, ice, steam, damp earth with green grass, glassy water sculpture, cloud... Then, at the end of the last act, Eve is transformed into a mountain, bushes, shrubs, plants, streams and animals spreading out from her skin, while around her, white birds slowly flap their wings. A song of the earth and a cloud of bird-children.

Commissions
Evas Erstgeburt (Act 1) : WDR Cologne
Evas-Lied (Act 2, scene 4): Berliner Festwochen
Der Kinderfänger (Act 3, scene 2) and Entführung (Act 3, scene 3): Rencontres Internationales de Musique Contemporaine, Metz

Composition: 1984-1988
World premiere: May 7, 1988, at Teatro alla Scala, Milan.
Revived at the Festival d'Automne in Paris in 1988. 
Publisher: Stockhausen Verlag.

Tickets (Philharmonie de Paris). 

Tickets (Festival d'Automne à Paris). 

Complete premiere of this production on November 29, 2025 at the Philharmonie de Paris - Cité de la Musique. 
Creation of part of Act 2 and Act 3 on January 18 and 19, 2025 at the Opéra de Lille.

Structure

Opera in three acts, a salute and a farewell for 21 performers (14 solo voices, 6 solo instrumentalists, 1 actor), chorus (on tape or live), 21 actresses (only in stage performances), children's chorus, girls' chorus, modern orchestra (3 synthesizers, 1 percussionist, tape) / conductor, sound projection. 

Montags-Gruss (Monday greeting)

Act I: Evas Erstgeburt (Eve's first birth)
- In Hoffnung (Waiting)
- Heinzelmännchen (Dwarfs) 
- Geburts-Arien (Birth airs)
- Knabengeschrei (Boys' cries)
- Luzifers Zorn (Lucifer's wrath)
- Das grosse Geweine (The great sobs)

Act II: Evas Zweitgeburt (Eve's second birth) 
- Mädchenprozession (Procession of young girls)
- Befruchtung mit Klavierstück (Fertilization with piano piece)
- Wiedergeburt (Renaissance)
- Evas Lied (Eve's song)

Act III: Evas Zauber (Eve's Magic)
- Botschaft (Message)
- Der Kinderfänger (The Child Abductor)
- Entführung (Abduction)

Montags-Abschied (Monday Farewell)