Conductor Maxime Pascal Brings Avant-Garde "Montag aus Licht" to Life

On a rainy evening in late October 2025, a group of music lovers gathered in Paris to preview excerpts from Karlheinz Stockhausen's experimental opera "Montag aus Licht." The private concert, held at the Fondation Singer-Polignac, was led by French conductor Maxime Pascal and his ensemble Le Balcon, who will perform the complete five-hour work on Nov. 29 at the Philharmonie de Paris as part of the city's annual Festival d'Automne.

The preview offered a taste of Stockhausen's highly unconventional "Licht" cycle, a series of seven operas named for the days of the week. The first part, "Montag," celebrates the goddess Eve through a blend of autobiography, myth, and eschatology. The performance featured sopranos vocalizing hauntingly, a children's chorus bleating like animals, and tenors gargling water—all elements of Stockhausen's innovative and demanding score.

Pascal, who is the first conductor to attempt the full "Licht" cycle, believes the work was ahead of its time when it was composed between 1977 and 2003. "We need to realize that when people talk about 'Licht,' they are talking about a work that was never actually premiered," he said. "We are talking about a work even I have never heard."

The upcoming "Montag" production, directed by Silvia Costa, aims to embrace the opera's themes of spiritual and artistic renewal from a female perspective, in contrast to the original staging's controversial depiction of Eve. Pascal sees Stockhausen's meticulous score not as dictatorial but as a guide to "make us go deeper in our roles as musicians and as artists."