Gyorgy Ligeti

condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (minimal spine and general wear) Gatefold sleeve. Insert included. | Ligeti dubbed  Le Grand Macabrean "anti-anti-opera" that blends popular theater, comics, and caricature with the Apocalypse and made use of unconventional sounds, including car horns, doorbells, and sirens. György Ligeti's only opera, and one of the great stage works of the twentieth century: Le Grand Macabre (1974-77), an "anti-anti-opera" based on Michel de Ghelderode's 1934 play La balade du Grand Macabre, with a libretto by Ligeti and Michael Meschke, director of the Stockholm Puppet Theatre. Set in "Breughelland" - a fictional country modeled on the nightmare landscapes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder - the opera tells the story of Nekrotzar, a figure who claims to be Death incarnate and announces the end of the world. The end of the world doesn't quite arrive. What does arrive is everything Ligeti had: the micropolyphony of Atmosphères, the mechanical precision of the Second Quartet, the absurdist vocal theatre of Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures, plus car horns, music boxes, electric doorbells, and passages of deliberate, corrosive vulgarity. Ligeti called the work a reaction against both traditional opera and the anti-opera of the avant-garde - hence "anti-anti-opera." It was premiered in Stockholm on 12 April 1978.

This LP presents scenes and interludes extracted from the opera in concert form. Inga Nielsen, soprano; Olive Fredricks, mezzo-soprano; Peter Haage, tenor; Dieter Weller, baritone; Chorus and Orchestra of the Danish Radio, Copenhagen, conducted by Elgar Howarth. Recorded 1979. Howarth had conducted the Stockholm premiere and was the opera's most devoted champion - he would later arrange the Mysteries of the Macabre concert suite from its coloratura arias. This was the first recording of any music from the opera, issued two years before the complete recording. Nielsen, Fredricks, Haage, and Weller all appear on both. LP on Wergo WER 60 085, 1980. Published Schott.