We have a thirst, so we are living !
Jan Lauwers directs Le Grand Macabre in Vienna (*****) [stream]
Author : Jos Hermans
Le Grand Macabre is György Ligeti's most important work from the mid-1970s. Opera was going through a rather lame crisis in those days. According to Maurizio Kagel, it was madness to want to write another opera after Wozzeck. In 1971, Kagel had caused a sensation with his anti-opera "Staatstheater." Ligeti felt that this said everything about stripping down what avant-gardists of the time considered too conventional a genre, and he decided to create an anti-anti-opera. In other words, by employing the experimental compositional techniques of the anti-opera, he would now attempt to write a real opera. After all, Ligeti was a passionate opera lover. When he discovered "La Balade du Grand Macabre," a surreal account of the apocalypse by our compatriot Michel de Ghelderode, he found what he was looking for: "At last I had found a piece about the end of the world, a bizarre, demonic, cruel and also very comic piece." He himself describes the music he designed for it as a form of pop-art : with numerous references to the past, referring to Monteverdi, Schumann, Liszt and Beethoven, he finally places himself in the tradition of opera history!
Two versions of "Le Grand Macabre" exist. The primal version held premiere in Stockholm on April 12, 1978. It is under the influence of Peter Sellars that Ligeti will revise the work in 1996. While the original version was in German, the revised version will be sung in English because Ligeti felt that swearing was much more civilized in English. Then, when Sellars first performed the revised work in 1997 at Gerard Mortier's Salzburg, he had linked the piece to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In Breughelland there was a nuclear drama. That almost cost him a lawsuit from the composer: "My whole piece is ambiguous and he (Peter Sellars) has turned this ambiguous piece into a completely unambiguous story, a propaganda story with a clear moral." In 2017, the last time I saw the work performed in a semi-staged version at the Berlin Philharmonie, Sellars again had been unable to resist the urge to once again link Ligeti's parable of doom to the doom of the nuclear. He probably hadn't thought for a moment of today's Nekrotzars, the charlatans of climate doom ("A great heat will come, as of a thousand suns").
Anyone looking for earworms in Ligeti's score will come home from a bare journey but the music is captivating from the first car horn fugue to the final passacaglia. The same goes for the extravagant vocal parts. The flow of the music is constantly interrupted and much sounds spontaneous, natural, as if improvised. If I had to choose a highlight, then surely the interlude halfway through the third scene. In this danse macabre, we hear how Nekrotzar arrives at the royal palace. You could see it as the musical rendition of Pieter Breughel's "The Triumph of Death," a painting that will appear twice on the backdrop in this Breughel-friendly show. It is a grandiose collage, this "homage to Charles Ives" : the isometric bass line refers to the Eroica, a strangely tuned violin plays a ragtime à la Scott Joplin, the bassoon raises a Greek Orthodox hymn, the clarinet mixes samba and flamenco, the piccolo tries to imitate a Scottish bagpipe. These are the composer's own words. It is hard to recognize his references in all of this. It also sounds a bit jazzy (Ligeti was also a jazz lover).
About this Viennese production I can only speak in superlatives because everything borders on perfection : the vocal performances, the acting, the choreography, the orchestra, even the sound of this live stream. This is also the most convincing effort I have ever seen in a theater by Jan Lauwers and the surprising aspect is also that he serves Ligeti's sparkling, absurd humor without political allusions or topicalities, although they are almost obvious. After all, the main themes are : false prophets, a corrupt government, an incompetent intelligence service and a hedonistic final morality. "I don't want to impose my views on anyone," the usually very committed director says humbly in the program book. This, in turn, we can recognize as a typical viewpoint of the visual artist who occasionally engages with opera. It may explain part of the success of this production.
What Ligeti learned from the various performances of the piece in the 1970s was that his composition as a drama could stand up well to a variety of director's interpretations, but not to mediocre singing: for him, if a part was not sung well, the theatrical element collapsed as well. Perhaps the key to the success of this production can be found here. Except for the lovestruck couple Amando/Amanda, all the soloists have large intervals to sing, often up to the head voice. They all do it equally well. Rarely have I heard such a homogeneous-sounding ensemble at work that, with such attention to each syllable, makes Ligeti's arch-difficult vocalises sound natural. And we also find that attention to detail in the accompanying actor's direction. That is the work of Jan Lauwers and in it he has absolutely succeeded.
I never knew Marina Prudenskaya to portray a more powerful character than the insatiable sex-fiend Mescalina. Her German is quasi-perfect. Gerhard Siegel (Piet the Pot) is a wonderfully cuddly Sancho Panza in Tyrolean outfit. Wolfgang Bankl (Astradamors) is given a pointed astrologer's hat by costume designer Lot Lemm but wears no women's underwear. Fortunately, Lauwers didn't make him a transvestite but a thick-skinned fatso who patiently endures Mescalina's torture. And of course, the "Tsar of Death" (Nekrotzar) is a perfect fit for Georg Nigl, versed in 20th century repertoire. Sarah Aristidou, the chief of the Gepopo, is almost immobilized by her enormous hoop skirt. She can't do much more than cackle and play with her skirt. And she delivers with the required virtuosity. Daniel Jenz (White Minister) and Hans Peter Kammerer (Black Minister) shine in the bickering duet as commedia dell'arte characters. Very simple but effective is the scene where they get Prince Go-Go on the rocking horse and Andrew Watts (Prince Go-Go) continues his role as the predestined countertenor for the 20th century repertoire. Maria Nazarova and Isabel Signoret, intimately entwined as a lesbian couple, lend lustre to the lyrical parts of Amanda and Amando. Their duet in the first act ends with a near quote from the Vier letzte Lieder.
The agile dancers of the Needcompany interact with the soloists, very subtly, never obtrusively. They seem redundant at first sight but they never are. They fool around with Lauwers' inflatable puppets, simulate the spider who is supposed to scare Astradamors and create a delightful chaos that fits the spirit of the piece very well to become an added value in the end. On two occasions the curtain goes down for a short scene before the curtain. This seems old-fashioned but is still extremely effective. Watch how the troubled Astradamors ("At last I am master in my own house!") announces the intermission !
Pablo Heras-Casado proves once again that he is a jack of all trades. The quiet confidence with which he takes his place in the orchestra pit to lead this demanding work reveals that we have not yet seen everything from him. The synchronicity between stage and orchestra pit is perfect. "Every fermata, every pause has a precisely determined length to the second and these in turn are dovetailed with the events on the stage", he says in the program booklet. The three percussionists each have about 30 instruments to master. As such, the sound image is largely determined by the percussion, next to low brass and low strings.
The question now is whether the work gains or loses with an update to today's apocalyptic world. One possible answer I expect from Vasily Barkhatov. Next month in Frankfurt.