In the second part, Andriessen uses just one text, and what a text it is: the seventh vision of Hadewijch of Antwerp. She was a 13th-century mystic, the most important writer in our Middle Dutch literature. In her vision, sung by a soprano and the chorus, she vividly describes how she had an encounter with God. He revealed Himself to her in various guises. Hadewijch experienced this so physically and lovingly that an unmistakable, if not to say torrid erotic tension emanates from the vision. Andriessen therefore imagined the second part of De Materie as something halfway between a mystical ascent and the union of two lovers. In his imagination, it looked like this. Slowly, step by step, Hadewijch shuffles forward through a church. Gradually, the reality around her – the world, the church, her own physicality – tries time and again to bring her back down to earth, but Hadewijch becomes increasingly absorbed in her experience. When she reaches the altar and arrives at the climax of her vision, music sounds that is simply heavenly: almost weightless, mysterious and unprecedentedly beautiful. According to conductor Bas Wiegers – and many will agree with him – the most beautiful notes Andriessen has ever written.

The third movement of De Materie swings the house down. We are in the early 20th century, in the universe of Piet Mondrian, the painter who conquered the world with his geometric compositions, with his black lines and blocks of colour in primary hues. In this movement, the spirit seems to translate mathematical insights and purely abstract geometric constructions onto, for example, a canvas. This time, the soloist is a dancer with a speaking part: with rhythmically articulated diction, she recalls memories of Piet Mondrian who, it turns out, was himself an avid dancer. The ultimate opportunity for Andriessen to blend ‘high’ and ‘low’ to his heart’s content, as he so loved to do. Musically, he eagerly draws from the wellsprings of disco and boogie-woogie, though that does not prevent him from occasionally crafting a fugue from those very same ingredients.

If the previous movements echoed the structure of a symphony (a fast first movement, a slow second and a lively, dance-like and even witty third), then movement 4 once again features a subdued section, an introspective finale. The music is, if such a thing is possible, even more mysterious and ethereal than in the second movement, Andriessen allows his chords to reverberate and linger with an elusive power. Halfway through this final movement, the chorus speaks once more, and the text – consisting of fragments by Willem Kloos – suggests that this time the focus will be on the great themes of opera: beauty and desire, and how love defies death. Right at the very end, Andriessen fulfils those expectations when he silently introduces his final protagonist: the scientific legend Marie Curie. We thus remain in more or less the same spirit as in Part Three, but are now at Madame Curie’s home in Paris and in Stockholm, where she receives her second Nobel Prize. Andriessen alternates the speech she gives there in 1911 on the invisible force emanating from certain matter – radioactivity – with excerpts from her diaries. In these, she beautifully describes her immense struggle with the death of her husband and colleague Pierre Curie while the world races on relentlessly, thirsting for even more scientific discoveries.

To date, De Materie has had two legendary productions, and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen is now staging the third. For the 1989 premiere, Andriessen joined forces with theatre phenomenon Robert ‘Bob’ Wilson, who had already achieved world fame some twenty years earlier when he created Philip Glass’s opera Einstein on the Beach together with Lucinda Childs. Legend has it that it was in fact Bob Wilson who gave Andriessen idea to dedicate his final movement to Marie Curie. His direction was abstract, absurdist, colourful and peppered with dance and comic interludes. Reinbert de Leeuw was the conductor of his dreams and would remain an advocate of the piece for the rest of his life. In 2014, Heiner Goebbels took up the challenge for the Ruhrtriennale with a grand-scale and imaginative hit production, featuring zeppelins and period costumes.
Anyone who saw that performance will remember above all the flock of sheep, and their pungent smell, which Goebbels brought onto the stage – perhaps his way of forcing the audience to face the reality of the situation.