ADA Artist Management & Representation

Randall Scotting: Prince Go-Go (cover)

Surreal, darkly whimsical, grotesque, sardonic, spine-tingling, exhilarating—these all have been used to describe György Ligeti’s only opera, Le Grand Macabre. Based on the theater piece La Balade du Grand Macabre by Belgian author Michel de Ghelderode, the composer created the libretto with Michael Meschke for this fantastical work, set in near-apocalyptic Breughelland (a reference to the eerily fascinating canvases of Dutch painter Pieter Breughel). It is a comic masterpiece that took 26 years to get its first performance in the United States (even though it had already been performed in nearly 30 European cities). Ligeti himself gave an idea of what he had in mind in this opera of the absurd: “It’s an imagining of the end of the world, but very colorful, very bizarre, populated with medieval imps… It’s a Rabelaisian world, a world full of obscenities, sexual and scatological. People are constantly eating and drinking and leading a very chaotic life. It all happens in a sort of broken-down dictatorship where two opposing parties, both completely corrupt, pursue in reality the same crooked policies…It’s tragic and light-hearted at the same time…It’s not my intention to be provocative, though naturally I enjoy shocking people a bit.”  Tickets & Information