Stimmung

51 musical models for overtones singing: 51 attempts to find God through ritualized gestures of collectivity and isolation. Coinciding with the development of protest movements and countercultures of the 60s and 70s, STIMMUNG by Karlheinz Stockhausen unfolds the search of six voices for the very last Übereinstimmung, the vocal (and not only) accordance of the parts within the whole. A search that always creates a new unique experience in the immediacy of the listening HIER and NOW to each other. The scenic-choreographic staging by Margaux Marielle-Tréhoüart and Opera Lab Berlin gives visual illustration of the complex vocal happenings on the stage through spatial-physical actions, and raises questions about contemporary functions of the metaphysical, the transcendent and the divine in a secularized Western world. New Age and hippie movements are now seamlessly integrated into commercial popular culture. Alternative forms of performance are standard in the spectacle society. Spiritualism has become goods, like any other merchandised thing. Religious practices have been acquired into practices of the everyday life of the consumerist western world. In the midst of this metaphysical homelessness is the longing for superordinate contexts of meaning – or at least for spheres of truth, beauty and happiness accessible through faith, hope and certain rituals – human, all too human. A community of dancing singers embarks with the audience on an ongoing search for meaningfullness. Torn by moments of isolation and collectivity, the desperately hopeful group conjures up artificial and real paradises. In the Ballhaus Ost - in the 19th century the celebration hall of a free religious congregation - STIMMUNG becomes both God's requiem and an attempt to revive his remains. God is dead, long live God!