It is not the headache of four separate helicopters carrying string quartet performers that is keeping Graham Vick awake at night. It is more, he confessed, the strain of 11 flying string and woodwind soloists that is exercising his mind ahead of the first performance of one of the world's most unusual operas.
Birmingham Opera Company has announced it is to stage one of the most challenging operas ever written, Karlheinz Stockhausen's five-hour epic Mittwoch aus Licht (Wednesday from Light), during the London 2012 festival.
Featuring real helicopters, two choirs, octophonic sound, numerous musicians, the Radio 1 DJ Nihal and requiring two separate performance halls, this will be the first time that all six parts of the opera have been staged together.
Vick, the company's longstanding artistic director, said the project was driven by "the vision that opera must go beyond the opera house and beyond the enclosed existing opera audience".
He said the challenge was exciting and enormous. "Stockhausen's vision is utterly beguiling, seductive, irresistible and fabulous. He is one of the great originals of all time – a dreamer, a visionary, a man who dared to believe that things were possible which I have no idea how to achieve."
The "bewilderingly difficult" piece will be performed four times between 22 and 25 August, starting at 4pm each day at the Argyle Works, a former factory in Digbeth, Birmingham.
Funded by Arts Council England (ACE) and Birmingham city council, it will be a highlight of this summer's London 2012 festival, the showcase finale of the Cultural Olympiad, which aims to present once-in-a-lifetime arts and culture performances.
Wednesday from Light easily ticks the once-in-a-lifetime criteria. Its finale, in which a string quartet perform in separate helicopters – so the whirring blades become part of the music – has been performed in isolation, but never as part of a complete performance. Vick said the DJ Nihal would be part of the helicopter segment in the role Stockhausen intended for himself, as a kind of moderator or commentator.
Vick said the work, with its spiritual themes, exploring concord and co-operation, was ideal for the Olympic year.
Kathinka Pasveer, who worked with Stockhausen for 25 years and helps to look after his legacy as director of the Stockhausen Foundation for music, said the composer had longed to see the entire work performed, right up to his death in 2007. "His vision for Mittwoch is a musical expression of global harmony of love and collaboration in a united humanity. We are delighted and grateful that his dream is now becoming a reality."
There will be much that is strange for any audience, let alone fans of experimental, genre-breaking new music. Vick said the helicopters, which the audience will see on screens, were probably one of the most straightforward elements. "Imaginatively the biggest challenge is the orchestra soloists because each soloist flies; comes closer, goes away and has to be synchronised in a very complex way. It is the thing at the moment that is keeping me most awake."
Birmingham council's leader, Mike Whitby, said the staging was one part of "the compelling and eclectic range of arts, sport and culture which is reverberating within this culturally dynamic city".
The helicopter segment will also be available for all to see through The Space, a new digital arts platform that is a collaboration between ACE and the BBC.
