LE GRAND MACABRE – MUNICH OPERA FESTIVAL
★★★★★☆
Photo: Wilfried Hösl
REVIEW LE GRAND MACABRE: INSANE CHAOS IN DEEPLY BIZARRE OPERATIC PURGATORY
Top Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski takes the plunge with a spectacular and technically ambitious production of Le Grand Macabre as the opening performance of the 2024 Munich Opera Festival. If you’re mentally dressed for a classical opera experience, you can go home and get dressed again. OMG a chaos of insane music, bizarre costumes and absurd snapshots of the action you are subjected to in this surreal eye-opener of 2 hours of uninterrupted opera purgatory.
Photo: Wilfried Hösl
Le Grand Macabre is the work of Hungarian composer György Ligeti, who blended opera, operetta and atonal soundscapes into a deeply avant-garde tale of the end of the world and the end of civilizations.
The production premiered in 1978 and has been performed at the Copenhagen Opera (2014) in Kasper Holten’s acclaimed staging. I saw it myself at the time and remember it as something of a mouthful, but it was also before I had a more proactive approach to the opera genre and its outer limits.
After a mixed reception at its world premiere in Stockholm (allegedly partly because the international opera press didn’t understand Swedish), the work has worked its way up to become one of the most popular new operas when opera houses want to set a creative marker and send a bold signal.
Anyone involved in opera is familiar with the difficult balancing act of mixing the right repertoire cocktail of broad and narrow productions – nurturing artistic necessity while selling tickets.
Photo: Wilfried Hösl
Warlikowski lets the action take place in and around a giant, barbed wire-covered cage at the center of the stage, in which changing characters unfold something that never really coalesces into a tight, chronological plot, but rather flashes like a series of absurd scenes populated by twisted archetypes.
Necrotsar has risen from the grave to proclaim the end of time. Together with his assistant, the dashing sommelier Piet From Tap, he embarks on an apocalyptic journey through a fantasy land that turns out to be a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah of booze and sex, ruled by the infantile Prince Go-Go-Go, corrupt ministers and perverse courtiers – inhabited by a frightened and oppressed people and controlled by the secret police Gepopo.
Photo: Wilfried Hösl
The highly esteemed conductor Kent Nagano has complete control of the orchestra, soundscapes and strange effects, following a musical masterplan that I can barely believe can be written down on sheet music or at all.
In the leading roles, Michael Nagy as Nekrotzar, Lindsau Amman as Mescalina, John Holiday as Prince Go-Go-Go, Benjamin Burns as Piet From Tap and others give fine performances in the demanding parts.
Photo: Wilfried Hösl
One tableau after another – complemented by stunning video animations in Cinescope – globes collide across the full width of the stage with clear nods to Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, mixed with strange black and white silent film clips of violent riots, battles and destruction.
Like Melancholia, Ligeti’s Macabre is also about an impending doom – and how people react to the impending end of everything.
Unlike Trier’s film, in this case, the doom is all over the place and never materializes. Maybe it was all just a drunken dream!
The piece, which György Ligeti himself describes as anti-anti-opera, is packed with historical music quotes, extreme coloratura, choppy rhythms, crazy use of instruments, car horns and cacophonous chaos.
Photo: Wilfried Hösl
Musically, it honestly becomes somewhat exhausting in the long run due to the total absence of melodic composition. On the other hand, you witness a powerful discharge in a completely original, artistic manifestation that makes an impression as a total experience.
Some audience members may have left during the performance, but the overall reception was positive bordering on enthusiastic at the evocations.
Warlikowsky doesn’t hold back on the comedy amidst all the dystopia, and there are absurd costumes, sadomasochistic leather sex, grotesquely creepy animal masks and stage technology that bangs and clangs. Check out the video trailer here.
Macabre is a show that you experience forwards and understand backwards – and what’s wrong with a little reflection.
There’s no way around five stars for Warlikowski and Le Grand Macabre from GOT TO SEE THIS
