Le Grand Macabre

Synopsis

Set in an imaginary country (Breughel Land) this opera has a surreal plot which features sex, drinking, economic crisis, politics and corruption with an over-riding theme of death and the end of the world. But when the end of the world arrives, as announced by Nekrotzar, the only person to die is Death himself. First performed 1978.

Our Review:

Simon Thomas - 18 September 2009

The UK Premiere of György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre by English National Opera was an operatic highlight of the early eighties. It’s now back at the Coliseum in a vastly different production by Catalan “total theatre” company La Fura del Baus.

The staging is dominated by an enormous naked woman (to give an idea of dimensions, two real heads stand in for eyeballs at one point), who twists, turns and grimaces throughout the evening. This astonishing apparatus is a blank landscape onto which images of death and calamity are projected. The hanging tendons of the lovers Amando and Amanda, recalling Gunther von Hagens specimens, grinning skulls and unravelling intestines are constant reminders of corporeal fragility and the proximity of death.

There’s a danger that the visuals will overtake the show, were it not for the magnificence of the music. The real glory of the evening is Ligeti’s incredibly inventive and varied score, superbly ...

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Latest User Review

wolfgan - 9 October 2009:

fantastic set - simply stunning!...

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