György Ligeti's only opera, Le Grand Macabre, was initially suggested by film and theater director Göran Gentele who was in 1965 director of the Stockholm Opera. Ligeti and librettist Michael Meschke adapted Belgian author Michel van Ghelderode's 1934 play La balade du grande macabre into the needed libretto and finished the opera in a mere six years. The Wergo CD of the work (there are two; the other is led by Esa-Pekka Salonen on Sony) is not of the first production of Le Grand Macabre but the second, held in the Grossen ...
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György Ligeti's only opera, Le Grand Macabre, was initially suggested by film and theater director Göran Gentele who was in 1965 director of the Stockholm Opera. Ligeti and librettist Michael Meschke adapted Belgian author Michel van Ghelderode's 1934 play La balade du grande macabre into the needed libretto and finished the opera in a mere six years. The Wergo CD of the work (there are two; the other is led by Esa-Pekka Salonen on Sony) is not of the first production of Le Grand Macabre but the second, held in the Grossen Konzerthaussaal in Vienna in 1987 under the direction of Elgar Howarth.Le Grand Macabre is a mega-bizarre opera that is part post-modern avant-garde and part Marx Brothers; a mad escapade that calls for sirens, auto horns, and singers who are able to behave like loons, and yet sing up into the stratosphere if necessary. This performance is live and once in awhile you can hear a titter of laughter from the audience. Le Grand Macabre IS funny -- thankfully there is a thick...
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