To the apocalypse and beyond: Le Grand Macabre in Prague

Gustav Mahler aspired to write symphonies that encompassed the whole of creation. In his “anti-anti-opera” Le Grand Macabre, György Ligeti goes one further, covering the end of time and even its aftermath (whatever that might mean). To be fair, Ligeti had form on this. He is most famous for his music used in the “Through the Star Gate” scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and there are echoes of that near-out-of-body experience in the apocalypse scene in Le Grand Macabre. It was played phenomenally last night by Jiří Rožeň and the Prague State Opera Orchestra, opening the Opera Nova Festival.

At the outset, however, Ligeti is in full absurdist mode, giving us a series of surreal episodes from a selection of increasingly bizarre characters, from the henpecked stargazer Astradamors and his nymphomaniac wife Mescalina to the ineffectual Prince Go-Go with his scheming ministers and chief of secret police, by way of the lovers Amando and Amanda, the goddess Venus and Death himself (dubbed “Nekrozar”). In truth, though, the show is being run by the archetypal drunkard Piet the Pot, who jeopardises the entire apocalypse by getting Nekrozar so inebriated that he misses the stroke of midnight and can’t find his scythe and trumpet.

It’s not just the scenario that’s absurd, it’s the music. The overture, famously scored for 12 car horns, is actually one of the more normal bits compared to the succession of improbable percussion effects that follow (the dozens of instruments specified in the score include electric doorbell, metronome and tray of crockery). Ligeti is a musical magpie borrowing from everyone and everywhere; he veers between slapstick farting trombones to high wire coloratura à la Queen-of-the-Night to some of the most gorgeously lyrical love music you’ll hear from anyone.

It’s a gushing fountain of ideas, and in this new production, director Nigel Lowery makes a pretty good fist of matching it with the flow of staging ideas. Piet incarnates Death’s Pale Horse by turning into the rear end of a pantomime horse, pulling Nekrozar behind in the style of a French trotter race. The spider that terrifies Astradamors is a very real human with added prosthetic limbs, who descends from the flies. The proclamations of Go-Go and his ministers are projected on giant screens from the “News24” TV channel. And the comet that announces Judgement Day is replaced by a (mildly comet-like) coronavirus, which soon multiplies into smaller clones of itself. We see Amando and Amanda in profile, obviously male and female until they turn around and switch genders: each costume is half smart men’s suit and half pretty dress.

The pick of the singers was Eir Ingerhaub, doubling the ferociously difficult roles of Venus and the Chief of the Gepopo and dazzling with her bright, crystalline coloratura. As Piet the Pot, Thor Inge Falch showed a remarkable gift for singing a smooth tenor whose flow appeared undamaged by the continual intrusion of bibulous hiccups. Arnheiður Eiríksdóttir and Magdaléna Hebousse turned on the romantic charm as Amando and Amanda; Marcus Jupither was an imposing stage presence as Nekrozar. Geoffrey Skelton’s English translation, often highly poetic, is a gift to singing actors and everyone turned in good acting performances.

In spite of Lowery’s best efforts to keep the pace going, he couldn’t prevent some of the first half from dragging: my interest began to flag seriously with the length of Mescalina’s nymphomania scene. But then, the apocalypse was upon us and the intensity ratcheted up, both musically and in the staging: we were faced with a giant abattoir and meat-packing plant, into which cleaver-wielding pig-faced butchers herded the denizens of Breughelland in an eerie reminder of concentration camps. The interval was oddly placed, half way through the original Scene 3, but we were immediately back in the rollercoaster of emotions.

And then, in the aftermath when no one is sure whether they are dead or alive, Lowery shifts us completely. The whole cast is crammed into a small building in the centre of the stage, which is clearly a dementia care home. Everyone has aged by several decades as they deliver Ligeti’s powerful pacifist message of how life is short and kindness and good cheer are to be prized. Lowery seems to echo Eliot’s “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”

At the interval, it felt as if this production had taken a long time to spring into life. By the end, I was profoundly moved, and the more time passed after leaving the State Opera House, the more this felt like a truly important opera, with deep messages about life buried beneath its slapstick veneer and exaggeratedly eclectic music. It’s been well worth the trip to Prague.