FULL LE GRAND MACABRE (Ligeti) Bucharest 2023 Peter Hoare, Robin Adams, Vincent Le Texier, Sarah Aristidou
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Le Grand Macabre
- Composer: Ligeti György
- Libretto: György Ligeti, Michael Meschke
- Venue & Opera Company: The Romanian Athenaeum, Bucharest, Romania
- Recorded: September 17, 2023
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Peter Hoare, Robin Adams, Sophie Pondjiclis, Judith Thielsen, Marion Tassou, Vincent Le Texier, Sarah Aristidou, Andrew Watts, Paul Curievici, Charles Rice
- Conductor: ARNAUD ARBET
- Orchestra: GEORGE ENESCU PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
- Chorus: GEORGE ENESCU PHILHARMONIC CHOIR
- Chorus Master: IOSIF ION PRUNNER
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Enescu Festival, TVR
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: Ensescu Festival FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Le Grand Macabre (completed 1977, revised 1996) is the third and only major stage-work by Hungarian composer György Ligeti, following his Absurdist sung “mimodramas” Aventures (compl. 1962) and Nouvelles aventures (1965).
The “anti-anti-opera” 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, 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. It has since been performed in English, French, Italian, Hungarian and Danish, with only a few notes needing to be changed in order to adjust the opera to these languages.
Premiere, productions and revision
Le Grand Macabre was premiered in Stockholm on 12 April 1978. At least 30 productions have followed. In preparation for one at the 1997 Salzburg Festival, Ligeti prepared a substantial revision, tightening the structure by means of cuts in scenes 2 and 4, setting some of the originally spoken passages to music and removing others altogether. (As it turned out, composer was annoyed by the Salzburg staging, by Peter Sellars, and he expressed his displeasure publicly: Sellars, he said, went against his desire for ambiguity by explicitly depicting an Apocalypse set in the framework of the Chernobyl Disaster. Nevertheless the revision prepared for Salzburg has become standard.) Conductors who have championed Le Grand Macabre include Elgar Howarth, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Boder, Alan Gilbert, Sir Simon Rattle and Thomas Guggeis, who is due to lead a new staging in November 2023 at Oper Frankfurt.
Quoted from Wikipedia