Thursday, June 16, 2016

For Fans of the Gigantic


By Kathinka Pasveer - Kathinka Pasveer, CC BY-SA 3.0 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8385702

The 2019 Holland Festival is, somewhat unbelievably, going to stage Stockhausen's Licht cycle of seven (7) operas, one for each day of the week. From a (government?) document covering several years of upcoming artistic activities in the Netherlands:

In 2019 brengt het festival een integrale uitvoering van Licht van Karlheinz Stockhausen in wereldpremière.

At 29 hours of music, it's a lot longer than Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Yes, I'm planning to go.

H/T Alex Ross, who tweeted the link earlier today.

2 comments:

Immanuel Gilen said...

Ah, finally speaking Dutch comes in handy.

The publisher of the document is the Amsterdamse Kunstraad, which means Amsterdam Arts Council. This is (according to their web site) an independent advisory body of the Amsterdam City Council (which sounds like a paradox to me - but I think the implication is that it functions independently of the city council on a day-to-day basis, at least in theory). It looks like they advise the council on all budgetary and allocation matters for cultural funding, including charting 4-year arts plans for the city. Members of the Kunstraad are appointed by the so-called College of Mayor and Aldermen, meaning the executive power at the municipal level (as opposed to the legislative City Council).

Sort of a forest-through-the-trees situation (the material news being Licht obviously), but I figured I'd clarify the question mark in your post.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Thank you so much! Very helpful.