[There was a video here]

The Lincoln Center Festival is presenting a three night run of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Michaels Reise um die Erde. Marco Blaauw, in the titular role of Michael, flies upside down, slams into the World Trade Center, and goes to Japan all while playing the trumpet.

This hour-long singer-less opera is one of a seven part, modularly constructed, 29-hour operatic cycle called Licht. It was composed by Stockhausen beginning in 1977 through 2003. In 1971, after an NYC performance of another of Stockhausen's works:

Stockhausen, who had conducted the performance, reported that a bearded man, wearing a goatskin cape and carrying a sheherd's stick, showed him a copy of The Urantia Book—a mix of ideas inspired from various religios sources with the aim of uniting them with science and philosophy—and asked him to become "minister of sound transmission," and to decide on which sounds from the earth were worth preserving so as to project them into outer space by means of electromagnetic radiation since the descrution of the world was imminent.

Wild. Right? Just wait till you see the performance.

The protagonist, Michael, travels to Cologne, New York, Japan, Bali, India, Central Africa, and Jerusalem each time encountering different themes of life (death, love, life...). He and Lucifer fight in New York (which is portrayed as a big plane flying into the WTC), Michael falls in love with Eve in a swing, and there are a pair of clown swallows that harass the Ensemble musikFabrik during the entire performance.

The staging, technical direction, and lighting are incredible. If you are in town it is worth checking out.