Even in the second-half piece, an electronics-only excerpt from his week-long opera Licht, everything is prerecorded. Kontakte evolves seamlessly from start to finish like a dramatic poem. The pre-digital tools would have been hard to work, the months of editing reel-to-reel tapes inconceivable Yet the music being projected into the venue was gripping It flows, swoops and surprises in total, playful confidence. Both works were for pre-recorded tape, with the composer adjusting levels from a desk in the middle of the audience. Kontakte, the one from 1960, came as a shock Obviously, the sounds are rooted in their period. The pew-like rows would have been absurd for such freewheeling electronic music were it not that Stockhausen, in his lucid introductory remarks, spoke of front and back as though he always had a standard concert-hall set-up in mind. Set in part of the capacious former fish-market, separated off by black drapes, the event was so chic it could have been in Paris, except for the pure British nastiness of extracting £35 plus booking fee to sit in cramped, hard chairs.
Quadrophenia may not be a traditional opera, but it's a marvellous band performing terrific music that tells a strong story, blending song, drama and spectacle in a manner of its own Moved? Exhilarated? Uplifted? You bet Rock opera? Yeah. Why not?'The Who - Tommy and Quadrophenia Live with Special Guests' is released on 7 November by Warner Music Vision. Like an old rockers' concert, the visitations of Stockhausen bring out a particular crowd of aged rebels and curious youth. Townshend reached his audience by writing about alienation; but his classical contemporaries, experiencing alienation themselves, frequently forgot their audience altogether.Stockhausen's operas (such as Donnerstag aus Licht, 1978) are too navel-gazingly bizarre to expect much uptake. Michael Tippett, who wrote his own libretti, sometimes created psychological stories so convoluted that they can remain baffling even if you like the music.But The Who's rock operas connect with a public wide enough to include classical-music journalists We were all teenagers once. We've been there too, even if we were practising three instruments at the time And we love good music, well performed, whatever its genre. Tommy and Quadrophenia are as characteristic of their era as any opera by Mozart or Wagner.Labels can be deceptive.
What's more, Quadrophenia's subject matter - growing up - is timeless.In some ways, Quadrophenia is more successfully operatic than many "official" operas of the same time, not least because it's a sophisticated fusion of art forms, primarily well-wrought music, with something powerful to communicate. Wagner's monumental power matches the myths behind his stories; Townshend's rock soundworld fits Jimmy's angry internal agony to perfection.It's in Quadrophenia that Townshend really crosses the divide. The four different aspects of Jimmy's mind are each represented by a leitmotif, a Wagnerian association of idea with musical theme, which join together at the climax when Jimmy is stranded on a rock in the sea and experiences his spiritual epiphany. Meanwhile, there's a Gesamtkunstwerk idea, too: in this version, Jimmy's narration is portrayed on film, images of the sea return constantly, and a lengthy instrumental interlude accompanies a montage of newsreel footage, tracing the evolution of teenagers against a background of the Blitz, Hiroshima and The Beatles. Yet this adolescent anti-hero's spiritual journey involves emotions that run so high, with imagery so strong and archetypal, that Townshend borrows directly from Wagner's Das Rheingold to depict a boat journey.Wagner writes about gods building Valhalla, Townshend about an alienated teenager running away to Brighton; yet their protagonists are tormented to the limits of their experience, whether through godhood or through drink and drugs. Unlike many operas other than Wagner's, words and music originate (mainly) with the same creator. Tommy's plot lets it down a bit, requiring major suspension of disbelief: a child witnesses the murder of his father by his mother's lover, turns blind, deaf and dumb in consequence, becomes a pinball champion, then is cured by a smashed mirror and turns into a pseudo-Messiah who nonetheless remains alienated by his experience.Quadrophenia is more internalised: most of it takes place inside Jimmy's muddled head.
