Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Car Horn Prelude / Autohupen-Vorspiel Pr�lude aux klaxons
2. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 1: "Dies irae"
3. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 1: "Away, you swagpot!"
4. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 1: "Shut up!"
5. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 1: "Oh ...!" - "Amanda! Can do no more!"
6. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 1: "Ha-ha-ha-ha! Hey! Give me my requisites"
7. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 1: "Melting snow is thy breast"
8. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Second Car Hor Prelude / Zweites Autohupen-Vorspiel / Deuxi�me pr�lude aux klaxons
9. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 2: "One! Two! Three! Five!"
10. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 2: "Shapley and attractive figure"
11. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 2: "Venus! Venus!"
12. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 2: "Stop!" -"Sh! ... Quiet, for heaven's sake!"
13. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 2: "Who's there? A man?" - "A man!"
14. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Finale: "Fire and death I bring"

Disc 2:

1. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: Doorbell Prelude
2. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Arse- licker, arse- kisser!"
3. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Posture exercises!"
4. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Tsk..." - "Psssst!"
5. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Ahh! ... Secret cypher!"
6. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Hurray, hurray! My wife is dead"
7. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: Nekrotzar's Entrance
8. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Woe! Ooh!" - "For the day of wrath"
9. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "There's no need to fear"
10. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Up!"- "Drink!" - "Up!"
11. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Hmm! it's delicious!"
12. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: "Where am I? What time is it?"
13. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 3.: Interlude
14. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 4.: "Ghost Astradamors, are you dead?"
15. Le Grand Macabre, opera: Scene 4. Finale.: "Ah, it was good"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #166395 in Music
• Released on: 1999-03-23
• Number of discs: 2

Amazon.com's Best of 1999
It's apocalypse now in Hungarian composer György Ligeti's brilliantly imaginative opera about a comic-book Armageddon. Ligeti revised and tightened the original 1970s version of this masterpiece, which boils over with Brechtian grotesques. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, always sensitive to the pulse of the most compelling contemporary music, brings off a wacky, threatening, sardonic, and exhilarating account. --Thomas May

Amazon.com essential recording
It seems oddly fitting that 1999--a year marked by Y2K paranoia and doom-and-gloom trainspotters--is the year in which Sony chose to release this brilliantly charged version of György Ligeti's Le Grande Macabre, the Hungarian master's comic tale of apocalypse and "what me worry?" Originally composed between 1975 and 1977, Macabre follows the various bumbling citizens of "Breughelland" during "anytime." Problem is, their time is about to end, thanks to grim reaper Nekrotzar (played with deadpan grotesquerie by bass-baritone Willard White), who, aided by his bumbling servant Piet the Pot, has decided to lay waste to the world. Of course, nothing ever goes quite right. A pair of indistinguishable lovers (including the radiant mezzo of Charlotte Hellekant) sleeps right through the Armageddon, and the Great Macabre is reduced to asking himself, "Have I not just laid to waste the entire goddamned world?" in the hilarious final scene. Esa-Pekka Salonen's live recording zeroes in on the score's sardonic humor as well as its postmodern raidings. Compared to the first Macabre on disc--sung in German and not as compact as the revised, English version that Ligeti prepared for the 1997 Salzburg Festival revival--this one is the keeper, with better sound staging, wildly imaginative orchestrations, lucid program notes, and an enjoyably perky English rendition of the original text. Hearing all this perfect craziness--the townspeople mimicking a skipping record as they sing "Our Great Leader" in the third scene, the car horn prelude that leads off the production, the absurdist arguments of the Black and White Ministers--is a comic delight. Here is one of Ligeti's masterpieces--a must for fans of modern opera--in its full glory. --Jason Verlinde

Customer Reviews

One of the few contemporary masterworks in opera
I will not bother defending Le Grande Macabre for those dismayed at how it differs from earlier Ligeti; having studied the works from 1943 on, I hear a continuity that others may miss. Know only that the opera was influenced by the visual arts of Bosch, Brueghel and Saul Steinberg, the operas of Monteverdi and Verdi, the absurdist theater of Alfred Jarry, and the films of Charlie Chaplin. In other words, be forewarned!

Having not seen the recent San Francisco production I can only imagine the wild visuals, but the performers in this spanking new edition are spot on. Ligeti has considerably abridged and tightened the opera (first written in 1974-77), and has greatly refined his original vision (the composer has even gone on record preferring the English libretto to the original German.) The Wergo original is of interest primarily to completists.

Let me just add that history is everywhere present in LGM; this is the closest Ligeti's come to a "collage" work, which seems completely appropriate given the darkly surreal subject matter. He would never produce something quite like this again, but let us hope against hope that he finishes the long running operaplanned on the Alice books. For more about Ligeti, I recommend the Richard Steinitz work and life (although the earlier bios by Griffiths, Toop and Burde are great as well).

A great opera of our time
Ligeti's opera "Le Grand Macabre" based on the ballade of Michel de Ghelderode is a great musical achievement of our time. This version by Salonen, sung in English, is a reference. Salonen is a young enthusiastic conductor who loves the score (he told once something about composing and opera, after conducting Ligeti's Grand Macabre) and it is an authentic gift hearing Philharmonia Orchestra under his rules. In the casting, this version counts with a shining and lovely Amanda (Laura Claycomb),a funny Mescalina (Jard van Ness) and a really dark (literally) Nekrotzar (Willard White). Only Gepopo (Sybille Ehlert) is not fully convincent. But it is delightful hearing her, in any case, singing "Stern measures".

I am not agree with the stern reviews of some colleagues in this page. This Opera by Ligeti is magical, funny and delicious, as "The magic flute" of Mozart, for example. The music is powerful (the entrance of Nekrotzar, Astradamors' torture...) and filled with beauty (Gepopo's "misteries").

I love this opera and those of Penderecki, and I consider them the best works in their genre of the last 50 years.

Good opera, probably not destined for classic status
Though I haven't heard the German-language recording (the original libretto is in German), I have to believe that, in a language in which the listener lacks fluency, the immediacy of the text's impact would be lost. That's a serious loss when one is dealing (as here) with music that exists largely to amplify a text: rather like the acting in a silent movie (or--perhaps a more appropriate comparison here--the action in a Punch-and-Judy show). This English-language recording I therefore found very welcome.

No recording of course can give one a feel for the bizarre stage sets that (I have to think) must be essential to the impact of this opera in a live performance.

Relatively new though this opera is, to me it already seems somewhat dated, heavily redolent of the early 1970s. It also reminds one of Thornton Wilder's THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH, in that, after showing our Cosmic Problems, it facilely solves them by telling us (sort of) that Love Conquers All.

It IS refreshing to find such a broadly-targeted satire not unloading principally on the United States. Instead, there's a good deal of comic (and pretty funny) business about the follies of parliamentary government.