Le Grand Macabre

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 Michael Meschke [sv], 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.

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.

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".

Scene 3

Ligeti calls for a very diverse orchestra with a huge assortment of percussion in his opera:

The vast percussion section uses a large variety of domestic items, as well as standard orchestral instruments: