HOMMAGE À LIGETI – GYÖRGY LIGETI: LE GRAND MACABRE AN OPERA IN TWO ACTS Bartók Béla National Concert Hall György Ligeti: Le grand macabre – An opera in two acts György Ligeti, a 20th century composer who became a legend in his lifetime, would have turned 90 on 28 May 2013. In the series entitled Hommage à Ligeti jointly presented by the Palace of Arts and the New Hungarian Music Society (UMZE), one of Ligeti’s major works – and his sole opera – is staged to mark the anniversary. The event is all the more special as Le grand macabre has only ever been performed twice in Hungary, when it was staged at the Thália Theatre in 1998 under the direction of Balázs Kovalik some 20 years after its world première in Stockholm. As the composer stated, the fear of death permeates every moment of the opera, though at the same time its deadly serious message is packaged in an absurdly humorous fashion – thus marking it out as a characteristic Ligeti work. Scenes are connected only loosely to one another and the overall action has no direction, contrary to traditional operas. “I stuck with the idea of a colourful, comic-strip musical and dramatic plot, where the characters and the situations on stage should be informal and concise, not psychologically driven or disconcerting,” recalled Ligeti of the process of composition. “The action on stage and the music should be dangerously bizarre, completely over the top and crazy. No one dies as a result of the great apocalypse – which bursts like a soap bubble – except the Grim Reaper himself; and if he really was Death, then ‘Eternal Life’ is attained.” Whether this is Ligeti’s comic apocalypse or a blood-curdling requiem is up to the audience to decide. The production brought to the stage by Csaba Káel – which will be conducted by Gergely Vajda, a musician with an enterprising spirit who is well-versed in contemporary works – promises to be one of the outstanding events of the current season.