Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht

Donnerstag (Thursday) was the first completed work of the gigantic seven-opera cycle Licht (Light) by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928 - 2007). Composed over a span of 25 years and lasting nearly 30 hours in total, the cycle offers up a wide-ranging, experimental take on theology, time, and the nature of the universe. In Donnerstag, the protagonist Michael (a composite of the archangel Michael and of the composer himself) comes to life in three different guises, played by a singer, a dancer, and a trumpeter as he passes from an impoverished childhood to an artistically successful adulthood and, finally, to the celestial realm as an archangel.