No visit to Vienna without a visit to the opera. There I saw Le Grand Macabre; a grotesque, absurdist meditation on death, the apocalypse and human folly. Ligeti’s ‘anti-anti-opera’ from the 1970s remains, at least in terms of its subject matter, effortlessly relevant in 2026.  © Stephan Brueckler A few days before my visit to the opera in Vienna, conductor Zubin Mehta arrived at the Wiener Musikverein in a horse-drawn carriage where he was to give a concert. In Vienna, more than elsewhere, decorum is important: one goes to the opera or a concert in style. For my own visit to Le Grand Macabre, I wore a pair of worn-out jeans with loose stitches; the result of a city walk that took longer than planned, meaning I couldn’t return to my accommodation to change. I may have stood out a bit, I didn’t feel entirely at ease walking around the Wiener Staatsoper, but this deviation from the norm did feel fitting for Le Grand Macabre: Ligeti’s self-proclaimed ‘anti-anti-opera’. There is a moment in Le Grand Macabre where everything finally seems to fall into place: the interlude between scenes three and four. Here, the grotesque humor, the sonic collage, and the fractured dramaturgy suddenly coalesce into something lucid. In that passage, one recognizes György Ligeti as the composer whose music has so often found its way into film - capable of evoking vast, existential unease. It is also the moment that reveals what this opera according to its composer truly is: not a comedy, but a deeply unsettling tragedy. It is a striking realization, because much of Le Grand Macabre seems determined to obscure precisely that depth. Ligeti’s only opera - a grotesque, absurdist meditation on death, the apocalypse and human folly, loosely based on Michel de Ghelderode’s play La balade du grand macabre - is a work that premiered in 1978. It defies and parodies operatic conventions, leaving the audience often unsure as to what is ironic and what is sincere, and tossing them back and forth between extremes.  © Stephan Brueckler Ligeti sets out to create a world that is grotesque and humorous, yet laughter remains elusive. The famous use of car horns in the overture, for instance, begins as a provocative gesture, but quickly overstays its welcome. Similarly, the buffoonery surrounding Prince Go-Go stretches beyond the point where it can sustain comic energy, tipping instead into irritation. What might work as a brief absurdist flourish becomes labored when extended. Ligeti’s humour, his means of satire, often resembles a kind of avant-garde cabaret that has not entirely withstood the passage of time. (I had a similar feeling with some of the 'gimmicky' passages taken from Stockhausen's Licht-cycle a few years ago at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam; scenes with blunt, adolescent-like humour within a whole of grand theatre and sophisticated music.) An opera with grotesque humour and apocalyptic themes. It seems, considering the current state of affairs, obvious why the Vienna State Opera is staging Le Grand Macabre again following the 2023 premiere of this production. And since we are in Vienna, director Jan Lauwers gave, quite appropriately, the opera an operetta-style setting. Visually dazzling, with stage design and costumes that evoke both the grotesque and the whimsical, depicting a world on the brink of apocalypse but too absorbed in its vices to notice. The opera alludes to a profound tragedy. Ligeti’s own biography - marked by the tragedy of the Holocaust in which a large part of his family perished - suggests a composer with urgent stories to tell. But whether he succeeds as a storyteller here remains, at least for me, an open question. One senses a profound awareness of mortality and absurdity, a need to grapple with catastrophe not through solemnity but through distortion and exaggeration. In doing so, Ligeti makes frequent use of irony. People laugh, but are not happy. People tell a joke, but are not funny. Here, irony strips satire of its various layers, raising questions about the way Ligeti employs it. Instead of creating a fascinating ambiguity, what is complex becomes merely banal.  © Stephan Brueckler Ambiguity can be intriguing. By leaving room for interpretation, it can accommodate a multitude of meanings simultaneously, thereby lending a work greater depth. But that is not my experience with Le Grand Macabre. The all-encompassing irony turns us, the audience, into people held hostage by the Joker, waiting for Batman to come and rescue us. It is as if the opera does not dare to fully commit to its own emotional core. In the programme notes, conductor Pablo Heras-Casado draws a comparison with Wozzeck and Die Soldaten. Especially the comparison with Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten is instructive here: Zimmermann also employs fragmentation and complexity, but his work achieves an overwhelming theatrical unity, a totalizing vision of human experience. In contrast, Le Grand Macabre can feel diffuse. Its ideas are plentiful - musically and conceptually - but they do not always cohere into a focused dramatic trajectory. Musically, the evening made a compelling case for Ligeti’s stature. His score, dense with ideas and layered with meticulous care, came across with remarkable clarity from the pit. Under the direction of Pablo Heras-Casado, complex textures never turned opaque; they shimmered with detail, allowing Ligeti’s tapestry of sound to unfold in full.  © Michael Poehn On stage, however, the challenges for the cast were undeniable. Ligeti demands performers who are not only vocally fearless, but also impressive actors. The vocal score is renowned for being extremely difficult – full of extreme leaps, rhythmic complexity and almost impossible precision – yet is often curiously detached in terms of expression. To bridge this gap, singers must amplify their physical and theatrical presence, which only adds to the struggle with the already demanding material. While the vocal acrobatics may dazzle, they frequently overshadow any genuine emotional connection. Ultimately, Le Grand Macabre remains an opera that leaves more a than few questions unanswered. I saw a production that, both musically and theatrically, was as good as it reasonably could be – the questions concern the opera itself. It is an opera that emphasises its own importance, whilst at the same time undermining it at every turn. You are impressed by it, share in the excitement, but ultimately are left not entirely convinced. Ligeti’s ‘anti-anti-opera’ offers moments of undeniable brilliance, but it fails to bridge its extremes, preventing it from forming a satisfying whole. A day later, I saw Bedřich Smetana’s Die Verkaufte Braut. An opera from 1866 that was introduced to the Viennese public in 1897 by the then maestro of the Vienna State Opera, Gustav Mahler. An opera with accessible, entertaining music and a story I had to find my tolerance for it. It is, of course, not uncommon in opera for the music to be of a higher quality than the libretto. In this case, the librettist, Karel Sabina, felt the same way; he had envisaged a modest operetta and later stated that had he known Smetana would turn it into a large-scale, ambitious opera, he would have written a better libretto. No questions here after the performance This was a solid opera in which everything – the music, the singing and the rather clumsy story – fell into its predictable place. That was also part of my problem with it.
The whole thing left me rather cold; it didn’t intrigue me, and that wasn’t down to the orchestra or the cast – perhaps I simply wasn’t in the mood for it. I’d much rather have had the confusion and irritation of the day before. That experience nourished me and challenged me. Whatever intrigues me, for whatever reason, shapes me and, in the time that follows, often blends in unpredictable ways with the daily grind. Like an extra act of a performance that continues beyond the theatre. LE GRAND MACABRE - György Ligeti / Wiener Staatsoper, 25 March 2026 Nekrotzar: Georg Nigl Chef der Gepopo / Venus: Sarah Aristidou Fürst Go-Go: Xavier Sabata Amanda: Maria Nazarova Amando: Isabel Signoret Astradamors: Wolfgang Bankl Mescalina: Marina Prudenskaya Piet vom Fass: Gerhard Siegel Weißer Minister: Daniel Jenz Schwarzer Minister: Hans Peter Kammerer Ruffiack: Andrei Maksimov Schobiack: Alex Ilvakhin Schabernack: Dohoon Lee Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado Director (regie and staging): Jan Lauwers Costumes: Lot Lemm - Wouter de Moor
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