Opera/Theater: Die Materie at the Armory--sheep on drugs?

For non New Yorkers, the Armory is a large performance space in Manhattan, originally used in the 19th C for storing munitions/weapons, now used as a BIG space for arts productions. For example, when I saw Macbeth there a couple years ago, an entire gladitorial arena was set up inside, and you entered through foggy moors. In March I saw Die Materie, a 4 act opera/tone poem/? by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Unlike some of the new agey-spiritual spectacles, this one did not come off as one bad LSD trip, at least not always. While there were episodes of un-spiritual stasis, it was an overall fascinating thing to see (see picture of 200 sheep on stage, e.g.)

The music was sometimes interesting, occasionally too repetitive without enough forward motion. Movement 1 was about man's technology-- lots of rhythm, pounding chords (exactly 144 to start), Bachian math ratios, symbolic portrayal of the founding of Holland via shipbuilding, zeppelins overhead. Movement 2 was adagio, spiritual rather like Lutoslowski tries to be, featuring nun-like women slowly advancing through golden light. Movement 3 was about laws of nature, physics, motion, and quantum mechanics, with several enormous complex pendulums swinging to and fro, and with 2 flexible male dancers imitating the pendulum motions. All this was framed with jazzy music and art in back supposedly inspired by the painter Mondrian, who composed jazz music himself. Finally, and most memorably, 200 sheep came on stage under the zeppelins for the last movement, sort of a synthesis of the 3 others. The sheep entered and exited on cue, apparently driven by strategically placed food buckets, and were housed in the north Bronx, not far from where I live, and shipped into midtown each day.  A small choir intoned modernist tone clusters off and on during the performance, with a live orchestra playing mostly unseen (except for one time in which it was brought forward out into view on enormous rolling stage...not really sure why). 

Overall entertaining, if not really thought-provoking or transporting, and certainly quite a scene!  I doubt that I would want to listen to the music without seeing the live spectacle, but that could be said of some conventional opera as well (e.g. Der Rosenkavalier, Turandot). This sort of opportunity is certainly one reason that I have wanted to live near Manhattan for some years now.