György Ligeti: The great citizen horror opera in a comparison test

2023-11-28 12:19:04

The composer György Ligeti, who died in 2006 and was born 100 years ago, wrote only one opera – “Le Grand macabre”. The formerly horrifying piece has gathered some dust as a wildly rowdy anti-anti-opera, but the Vienna State Opera is still advertising its premiere performance of the great macabre with “sex, alcohol and arias”. She knows what the musical theater clientele is into. Because basically these same ingredients apply to a large part of the repertoire.

Ligeti’s “Breughelland” burned down. Or it will burn down soon. At least that’s what is prophesied at the beginning of this cheerfully loud, anarchic-silly two-act play that starts with the noise of car horns. The puppeteer Michael Meschke and Ligeti wrote the libretto based on “La Balade du Grand Macabre” by Michel de Ghelderode from 1934.

The premiere was in Stockholm in 1978. But as it is, the predicted end of the world usually doesn’t happen. Into an imaginary, corrupt land of milk and honey – “eaten, drunk and whored” – Death, alias Nekrotzar, alias the demonic Great Macabre, bursts in to announce the imminent destruction of the world and frivolous humanity.

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But there are already sadistic couples and the greedy Piet vom Fass doing it colorfully. In between, the coloratura hysterical head of Prince Go-Go’s secret police is spying. Seduced and overwhelmed by life’s unknown desires, only Nekrotzar himself dies in the end. Everyone else comes to the realization that their temporary survival should be used to maintain prevailing conditions, and so the final chorus reassures: “Don’t be afraid!”

The loosely paced piece is full of quotes, crude scenes and silly jokes. Spoken texts, extreme coloratura arias, slapstick, rhythmically complicated ensembles and cabaret-like scenes were once a challenge, but today they are a feast for the highly agile actors.

The large, highly demanded orchestra is expanded to include a lot of percussion and keyboard instruments. Ligeti alternates between series structures, cluster formations and sound surfaces similar to those in “Atmosphères”, quotable phrases, rhythmic singing that traces the speech melody and gesture-rich, comic-like film music.

Any scandalous substance lost

Ligeti revised his piece for Salzburg in 1996. The lovers Clitoria and Spermando became the more demure duo Amanda and Amando. He has previously published three arias for concert use under the title “Mysteries of the Macabre”. They are becoming increasingly popular with coloratura sopranos, with Barbara Hannigan, who conducts herself, particularly causing a sensation in her super-sexy costumes.

Even though “Le Grand Macabre” has long since lost any scandalous substance as a provocation, through ironic distance, alienation and a continuous ambiguity that “takes the serious humorously and the comic dead serious,” its cursory basic theme – the elimination of fear and the triumph of Eros – represent a type of “hyper-colored, comic-like event” (Ligeti), “in which the characters and stage situations should be direct, concise, unpsychological, astonishing and yet completely sensual.”

Scene from Vasily Barkhatov’s Ligeti production in Frankfurt

Source: Barbara Aumüller

Now that’s a thing with sensuality on the scene. In Frankfurt (which Ligeti certainly wouldn’t have liked, but is good for the piece), director Valery Barkhatov moves away from the medieval, hearty original and consistently moves the action into today’s news, where everyone can follow the approach of the fatal comet on various media devices. Because everyone is stuck in a traffic jam under a concrete bridge and is stressed.

The Macabre (according to: Simon Neal) turns out to be a hearse driver who transports the lesbian, but still male and female connoted bridal couple Amando and Amanda (most favorite: Elizabeth Reiter and Karolina Makuła) in a coffin. In his camper, the astrologer Astradamors (Alfred Reiter) sits in front of ancient computer games, while his wife Mescalina (Claire Barnett-Jones), who sexually abuses him, is freaking out sensually and unfulfilled. And Piet vom Fass (Peter Marsh) enjoys one.

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While Frankfurt’s new GM Thomas Guggeis gives the orchestra a lot of grinning tinder, but spreads out the ruckus and artistic noise in a finely artificial way, Barkathov lets Prince Go-Go (Eric Jurenas) dance in a wild masked orgy on the volcano in his Casino Royal in the second act, while the limp boss of the Gepopo (altitude-safe sound pleasure glider: Anna Nekhames) is being driven around in a wheelbarrow and fat angels are playing a passacaglia.

At the end, the fun suddenly ends, even if everyone can continue to stagger towards an end that is still certainly far away. Only Nekrotzar watches war videos. Lots of impact, but no morale. So you can still spend a little more than two entertaining hours playing in English in Frankfurt.

In Vienna, however, people sing in German, but it is still terribly bland and shockingly harmless. Because while Pablo Heras-Casado allows the luxurious euphony of the State Opera Orchestra to exist even with such brittle music, and even nonchalantly exposes it in a rhythmically sophisticated way in the brass farts, the choreographer Jan Lauwers stages a completely indecisive, interpretation-resistant, visually banal, even musty farce.

Lost, very sad figures

The singing staff plus twelve dancers have to constantly twitch and contort, they wear costumes in the style of Commedia dell’Arte, and a real Brueghel hidden object image is sometimes projected onto colorless panels. Nekrotzar (with a fantastic acting power: Georg Nigl) flops out of a golden cube that means as little as his limply inflated balloon horse.

The somewhat shrill Sarah Aristidou as the head of Gepopo in an absurd giant hoop skirt, the very sweet Andre Watts (Prince Go-Go), who lives in a pizzeria, Marina Nazarova (Amanda), Isabel Signoret (Amando), Wolfgang Bankl (Astradamors), Marina Prudenskaya (Mescalina) and Gerhard Siegl (Piet vom Fass), they all strive to create three-dimensional characters, but are very sad figures lost in the sensory-free space.

Let’s see, in mid and late June 2024, “Le Grand Macabre” will have two more premieres in Prague and at the opening of the Munich Opera Festival on the program. Will this all-too-crowned apocalypse be saved as a small world theater afterward or will it finally end up on the repertoire remnant stage?