Le Grand Macabre (completed 1977, revised 1996) is the third stage production by Hungarian composer György Ligeti, and his only major stage-work. Previously, he had created two absurdist sung "mimodramas" Aventures (compl. 1962) and Nouvelles aventures (1965).

Described as an "anti-anti-opera", Le Grande Macabre has two acts and lasts about 100 minutes. Its libretto, based on Michel de Ghelderode's 1934 play La balade du Grand Macabre, was written by Ligeti himself in collaboration with , director of the Stockholm Puppet Theatre. The language was German, the title Der grosse Makaber. But for the first production, in 1978, it was translated into Swedish by Meschke under the French title by which it has been known ever since, and under which it was published. Besides these two languages, Le Grand Macabre has been performed in English, French, Italian, Hungarian and Danish, with only a few notes needing to be changed in order to adjust.

The piece contains a dual role for a coloratura soprano that is considered exceptionally difficult; in its premiere the roles were sung by different singers.

Premiere, productions and revision

Le Grand Macabre was premiered in Stockholm on 12 April 1978. At least 30 productions have followed. For one in Paris in February 1997 (under the auspices of that summer's Salzburg Festival), Ligeti the previous year prepared a revision, making cuts to Scenes 2 and 4, setting some of the originally spoken passages to music and removing others altogether. (As it turned out, the composer was annoyed by the Paris staging, by Peter Sellars, and expressed his displeasure publicly. Sellars, he said, had gone against his desire for ambiguity by explicitly depicting an Apocalypse set in the framework of the Chernobyl Disaster.) This 1996 revised score was published and has become standard. Conductors who have championed Le Grand Macabre include Elgar Howarth, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Boder, Alan Gilbert, Sir Simon Rattle, Thomas Guggeis, who led a new staging by Vasily Barkhatov in November 2023 at Oper Frankfurt, and Pablo Heras-Casado, who conducted a different new production a week later at the Vienna State Opera.

Roles

{| class="wikitable"

|+

!Role

!Voice type

!Premiere cast, 12 April 1978<br>Conductor: Elgar Howarth

|-

|Chef der Gepopo (Chief of the Gepopo, the political police)

|high coloratura soprano

|Britt-Marie Aruhn

|-

|Clitoria (Amanda in the revision), lover

|soprano

|Elisabeth Söderström

|-

|Spermando (Amando in the revision), lover

|mezzo-soprano

|Kerstin Meyer

|-

|Mescalina, wife to Astradamors (and sadist)

|mezzo-soprano

|Barbro Ericson

|-

|Fürst Go-Go (Prince Go-Go)

|countertenor (or boy treble)

|Gunilla Slättegård

|-

|Piet vom Fass (Piet the Pot)

|tenor

|Sven-Erik Vikström

|-

|Nekrotzar (title role)

|baritone

|Erik Saedén

|-

|Astradamors, astronomer (and masochist)

|bass

|Arne Tyrén

|-

|colspan="3"|supporting roles:

|-

|-

|-

|Venus

|coloratura soprano

|Monika Lavén/Kerstin Wiberg (voice)

|-

|Ruffiack, ruffian No. 1

|bass

|Ragne Wahlroth

|-

|Schobiack, ruffian No. 2

|baritone

|Hans-Olof Söderberg

|-

|Schabernack, ruffian No. 3

|bass

|Lennart Stregård

|-

|White-party minister

|spoken role

|Dmitry Cheremeteff/Sven-Erik Vikström (voice)

|-

|Black-party minister

|spoken role

|Nils Johansson/Arne Tyrén (voice)

|-

|-

|colspan="3"|Chorus: people of Breughelland; spirits; echo of Venus

|}

The roles of Venus and Chef der Gepopo are occasionally sung by the same coloratura, a dual role that is considered exceptionally difficult. Opera critic Joshua Kosman called it "fiercely demanding".

Style

Le Grand Macabre falls at a point when Ligeti's style was undergoing a significant change—apparently effecting a complete break with his approach in the 1960s. From here onward, Ligeti adopts a more eclectic manner, re-examining tonality and modality (in his own words, "non-atonal" music). In the opera, however, he does not forge a new musical language. The music instead is driven by quotation and pastiche, plundering past styles through allusions to Claudio Monteverdi, Gioachino Rossini, and Giuseppe Verdi.

Concert excerpts

Three arias from the opera were prepared in 1991 for concert performances under the title Mysteries of the Macabre. Versions exist for soprano or for trumpet, accompanied by orchestra, reduced instrumental ensemble, or piano.

Recordings

  • Ligeti, György. Szenen und Zwischenspiele aus der Oper Le Grand Macabre. Recorded 1979. Inga Nielsen (soprano), Olive Fredricks (mezzo), Peter Haage (tenor), Dieter Weller (baritone), Chorus and Orchester of the Danish Radio, Copenhagen, conducted by Elgar Howarth. LP recording. Wergo WER 60 085, Mainz: Wergo, 1980.
  • Ligeti, György. Scènes et interludes du Grand Macabre (1978 version, part 1). Inga Nielsen (soprano), Olive Fredricks (mezzosoprano), Peter Haage (tenor), Dieter Weller (baritone), Nouvel Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Gilbert Amy. In Musique de notre temps: repères 1945–1975, CD no. 4, track 3. Adès 14.122–2. [N.p.]: Adès, 1988.
  • Ligeti, György. Le Grand Macabre: Oper in zwei Akten (vier Bildern): (1974–1977). Recorded 16 October 1987, sung in German. Dieter Weller (baritone), Penelope Walmsley-Clark (soprano), Olive Fredricks (mezzosoprano), Peter Haage (tenor), the ORF-Choir, Arnold Schoenberg Choir (Erwin Ortner, choir-master), the Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen (Elisabeth Ziegler, choir-master), and the ORF Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Elgar Howarth. Wergo 2-CD set WER 286 170–2 (box); WER 6170-2 (CD 1); WER 6171-2 (CD 2). Mainz: Wergo, 1991.
  • Ligeti, György. Le Grand Macabre (1997 version, in four scenes). Recorded live at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, France, 5–13 February 1998. Sibylle Ehlert and Laura Claycomb (sopranos), Charlotte Hellekant and Jard van Nes (mezzosopranos), Derek Lee Ragin (countertenor), Graham Clark and Steven Cole (tenors), Richard Suart, Martin Winkler, Marc Campbell-Griffiths, and Michael Lessiter (baritones), Willard White and Frode Olsen (basses), London Sinfonietta Voices, Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. 2-CD set. Sony S2K 62312. György-Ligeti-Edition 8. [N.p.]: Sony Music Entertainment, 1999.
  • Deutscher Musikrat. Musik in Deutschland 1950–2000, Musiktheater 7: Experimentelles Musiktheater, CD 2: Meta-Oper. Experimentelles Musiktheater. 1 CD recording. RCA Red Seal BMG Classics 74321 73675 2. Munich: BMG-Ariola, 2004.

:: György Ligeti: Le Grand Macabre: Oper in vier Bildern (1974–77, 1996 version, excerpts, recorded 1998). Caroline Stein (soprano: Venus), Gertraud Wagner (mezzosoprano: Mescalina). Brian Galliford (tenor: Piet vom Faß), Monte Jaffe (baritone), Karl Fäth (bass), Niedersächsisches Staatsorchester Hannover, Chor der Niedersächsischen Staatsoper, conducted by Andreas Delfs. (The CD also includes excerpts from Mauricio Kagel's Aus Deutschland, John Cage's Europeras 1 & 2, and Ligeti's Aventures für 3 Sänger und 7 Instrumentalisten. .

  • Ligeti: Le Grand Macabre (Barcelona 2011) Chris Merritt, Barbara Hannigan, Gran Teatre del Liceu/ La Fura dels Baus/ Arthaus DVD 2012, .

References

Footnotes

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Sources

Further reading

  • Bauer, Amy. 2017. Ligeti's Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism and the Absolute. Farnham: Ashgate Publishers (cf. chapter 4).
  • Bernard, Jonathan W. 1999. "Ligeti's Restoration of Interval and Its Significance for His Later Works". Music Theory Spectrum 21, no. 1 (Spring): 1–31.
  • Cohen-Levinas, Danielle. 2004. "Décomposer le text ou comment libérer la langue au XXe siècle". In La traduction des livrets: Aspects théoriques, historiques et pragmatiques, edited by Gottfried R. Marschall and Louis Jambou, 607–612. Musiques/Écritures: Série études. Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne. .
  • Delaplace, Joseph. 2003. "Les formes à ostinato dans Le Grand Macabre de György Ligeti: Analyse des matériaux et enjeux de la répétition". Musurgia: Analyse et pratique musicales 10, no. 1:35–56.
  • Dibelius, Ulrich. 1989. "Sprache—Gesten—Bilder: Von György Ligetis Aventures zu Le Grand Macabre". : Zeitschrift für Neue Musik, nos. 28–29:63–67.
  • Edwards, Peter. 2016. György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre: Postmodernism, Musico-Dramatic Form and the Grotesque. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
  • Fábián, Imre. 1981. "'Ein unendliches Erbarmen mit der Kreatur'. Zu György Ligetis Le Grand Macabre". Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, 36, nos. 10–11 (October–November) 570–572.
  • Kostakeva, Maria. 1996. Die imaginäre Gattung: über das musiktheatralische Werk G. Ligetis. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang. .
  • Kostakeva, Maria. 2002. "La méthode du persiflage dans l'opéra Le Grand Macabre de György Ligeti". Analyse Musicale, no. 45 (November): 65–73.
  • Ligeti, György. 1978. "Zur Entstehung der Oper Le Grand Macabre". Melos/Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 4, no. 2:91–93.
  • Ligeti, György. 1997. "À propos de la genèse de mon opéra". ', no. 180 (November–December): 88–89.
  • Lesle, Lutz, and György Ligeti. 1997. "Unflätiger Minister-Gesang im Walzertakt: Lutz Lesle sprach mit György Ligeti vor der Uraufführung seiner revidierten Oper Le Grand Macabre". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 158, no. 4 (July–August): 34–35.
  • Michel, Pierre. 1985. "Les rapports texte/musique chez György Ligeti de Lux aeterna au Grand Macabre". Contrechamps, no. 4 "Opéra" (April): 128–38.
  • Roelcke, Eckhard, and György Ligeti. 1997. "Le Grand Macabre: Zwischen Peking-Oper und jüngstem Gericht". Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 52, no. 8 (August): 25–31.
  • Sabbe, Herman. 1979. "De dood (van de opera) gaat niet door". ' (February): 55–58.
  • Seherr-Thoss, Peter von. 1998. György Ligetis Oper Le Grand Macabre: erste Fassung, Entstehung und Deutung: von der Imagination bis zur Realisation einer musikdramatischen Idee. Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 47. Eisenach: Verlag der Musikalienhandlung K. D. Wagner. .
  • Toop, Richard. 1999. György Ligeti. Twentieth-Century Composers. London: Phaidon Press. .
  • Topor, Roland. 1980. Le Grand Macabre: Entwürfe für Bühnenbilder und Kostüme zu György Ligetis Oper. Diogenes Kunst Taschenbuch 23. Zürich: Diogenes. .
  • "Illusions and Allusions", interview with Ligeti about the opera
  • , La Fura dels Baus, with subtitles in Spanish
  • , a scene from the opera performed by Barbara Hannigan, Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra