2024-06-11 04:51:25
Uncommon musical components, similar to doorbells or tearing of paper, shall be heard within the Czech model of the avant-garde opera Le Grand Macabre by composer György Ligeti. It premieres on the Prague State Opera this Friday, June 14, when it additionally opens this yr’s Opera Nova competition.
The opera from the Nineteen Seventies is without doubt one of the most carried out from the second half of the twentieth century. Within the Czech Republic, nevertheless, she was solely recognized to those that had ever traveled overseas to see her. “Le Grand Macabre is a demanding and comparatively fashionable work. It isn’t straightforward to stage this opera, the music is extraordinarily advanced. The rating is known as a problem for the conductor, the orchestra and the soloists,” says Jiří Rožeň, who musically staged the Prague model.
Based on him, the instrumentation deviates from the same old parameters. For instance, he describes the string composition, which consists of three violinists, two violists, 4 double bassists and 6 cellists, as unconventional. The composition of the percussion devices can also be uncommon.
“I’ve by no means performed a chunk in my life the place there have been pot bangs or a metronome began and the singer sang at a unique tempo. There’s additionally tearing of paper,” Rožeň describes, mentioning that the rating comprises many detailed notes for the conductor.
Le Grand Macabre is the one opera by György Ligeti, who lived between 1923 and 2006. It was loosely impressed by a play by Belgian playwright Michel de Ghelderode known as The Ballad of the Nice Skeleton. The composer provocatively known as his model interwoven with postmodern allusions to Italian composers Monteverdi, Rossini and Verdi “anti-antiopera”. In it, he presents a weird apocalyptic imaginative and prescient of the demise of a grotesquely insane world, which is teeming with characters with expressive names similar to Nekrocar, Piet known as Bečka or Prince Go-Go.
The spectacular opera fresco takes place within the fictitious metropolis of Breughelland and shocks not solely with its harsh, horror and perverse photographs, but in addition with its musical language, which, along with classical devices, is co-created by sudden devices similar to automobile horns, doorbells, a hammer, an alarm clock, a paper bag, a tray with dishes, a kitchen pan or gun.
The opera Le Grand Macabre in Prague is directed by Nigel Lowery. | Picture: CTK
“We warn the viewers that gunshots shall be heard within the manufacturing, there shall be nudity and barely violent scenes,” reads the Nationwide Theatre’s web site.
British director Nigel Lowery is making his debut in Prague with this manufacturing. He additionally ready the set and costumes. He labored on the work for 5 years, it was delayed due to the staging.
Based on him, the character of the Nekrocar, which is initially speculated to be very skinny, shall be attention-grabbing within the Czech model. Within the manufacturing directed by Lowery, nevertheless, she is portrayed by the Swedish bass-baritone Marcus Jupiter, who, based on the organizers, is a extra expressive determine and a bon vivant kind. He impressed the director together with his vitality and charisma, which add further layers of character to the character.
Ligeti’s work could have its Czech premiere on the stage of the State Opera 46 years after its first efficiency. “Our opera custom right here is totally different and we have to begin progressively. We are able to understand the launch of such an opera in our nation as an enormous occasion, as a result of world-famous operas are coming to the Czech Republic,” provides Maxim Belčikov, government supervisor and creative co-curator of the Opera Nova competition.
It’s happening for the third time, this yr between June 14 and 22 it should provide three world premieres and two Czech premieres. The competition connects up to date opera work with different kinds of fashionable artwork and present subjects. The dramaturgy additionally displays vital historic occasions, this yr specifically the one centesimal anniversary of the demise of the author Franz Kafka.
Jiří Trtík, creator of the opera Kafka’s letter to his father. | Picture: CTK
The younger Czech composer Jiří Trtík commissioned the Nationwide Theater to create an opera based mostly on Kafka’s Letter to the Father, which the viewers will hear on June 15 and 20. Czech composer Šimon Voseček, who lives in Vienna, is signed to the scenic oratorio Stvůry, deliberate for June 17.
The Czech premiere will function the chamber opera The Yellow Wallpaper by the younger British composer Dani Howard. The kids’s opera Motýli z Terezín was created particularly for this yr’s competition, created by the French conductor and composer Charles Baumstark.
A number of productions will happen outdoors the premises of the historic constructing of the Nationwide Theatre, particularly within the State Opera, the New Stage, the Theater With out Rails and the ABC Theatre. This system additionally consists of accompanying occasions.
The organizers plan to progressively current in Prague an important operas of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, new works created on the order of the primary stage, and examples of opera manufacturing of current years.
Video: Ligeti presents the opera Le Grand Macabre
“It isn’t music for everybody,” stated György Ligeti about his solely opera, Le Grand Macabre. | Video: GDR Klassik