Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Le Grand Macabre

Nigel Lowery’s new production at Prague State Opera is a gusher of ideas, starting as slapstick but profoundly moving by the end.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Aurora Orchestra serve up an over-the-top confection at Purcell Room in Southbank Centre. 

Ligeti's “anti-anti opera” opens in Zurich in a new production by Tatjana Gürbaca. 

Simon Rattle leads the LSO and a fine chorus and cast of soloists in Ligeti's masterpiece: surreal, madcap but touching the sublime.

The world ended yesterday. Possibly. It probably didn’t, but the facts are still kind of fuzzy.György Ligeti’s only opera, Le grand macabre is a strange piece. The story is straightforward enough: Nekrotzar, a Death-like figure, travels around the world of Breughelland warning its citizens of impending doom – a giant comet will destroy Earth at midnight.

With sub-Ionesco doggerel for a libretto, a patchy score and a disjointed plot, it takes deft stage direction for farce and satire to blend credibly in Le grand macabre, Ligeti’s 1977 operatic spoof on doom-laden prophesizing.