Music Theatre since 1990 - Schott Music

Synopsis
‘The opera takes place in the completely degenerate but recklessly flourishing dukedom
of Breugelland. […] The opera’s main character is Nekrozar, the Grand Macabre, a sinister,
demagogic and dubious figure with an unshakable sense of mission. He maintains that he is the
figure of Death who has come to Breugelland in order to wipe out the entire population and
thereby also the whole of mankind with the aid of a comet that very day at midnight. Although
he enters the ducal palace with great pomp to proclaim his apocalyptic threats with supreme
confidence, he becomes caught up in the maelstrom of the all too worldly goings-on of the
people of Breugelland and, with the aid of the court astrologer and his drinking partner Piet
vom Fass, becomes so inebriated […] that his loftily declaimed proclamation on the imminent
end of the world falls totally flat. The intoxicated people of Breugelland believe themselves to
have already arrived in heaven, but it gradually becomes clear that life in heaven is identical to
that on earth. Everyone is still alive after all and only Nekrozar, the Grand Macabre, dies from
grief that he has failed in his crusade. If he were Death himself, then Death is now dead, eternal
life has begun and earth is at one with heaven: the Last Judgement has taken place. Should he
however merely have been a conceited charlatan and a dark and false messiah and his mission
merely empty words, life will continue as normal – one day everyone will die, but not today,
not immediately.’ (György Ligeti; source: Salzburg Festival 1997)
Selected Productions
12.04.1978 Königliche Oper Stockholm (WP of the original version)
Elgar Howarth · Michael Meschke · Aliute Meczies
28.07.1997 Salzburger Festspiele (WP of the new version)
05.02.1998 Théâtre du Châtelet Paris
Esa-Pekka Salonen · Peter Sellars · George Tsypin · Dunya Ramicova
11.03.1998 Niedersächsisches Staatstheater Hannover
Andreas Delfs · Ernst Theo Richter · Hartmut Schörghöfer · Jorge Jara
29.10.2004 War Memorial Opera San Francisco
Michael Boder · Kasper Holten · Jesper Kongshaug · Steffen Aarfing
07.02.2009 New National Theatre Tokyo
Uri Segal · Yasuki Fujita
17.09.2009 English National Opera
tba.
Le Grand Macabre is a unique masterpiece of absurdist opera and one of the few new works of
the post-Britten era to establish itself firmly in the international repertoire, thanks to a score of
dizzying pace and variety. It begins with a car-horn prelude, a parodic reference to the toccata of
Monteverdi’s Orfeo.[...] Juxtaposed with scenes of anarchic, earthy farce are passages of almost
Straussian eroto-lyricism — the love-duetting of the androgynous Amanda and Amando, who seek
oblivion in sex. (The Sunday Times, March 2009)
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