Opera in two acts. Libretto by György Ligeti in collaboration with Michael Meschk, based on a work by Michel de Ghelderode. Music by György Ligeti. First performed in Stockholm on 12 April 1978. Revised version premiered in Salzburg on 28 July 1997.

First performance in Spain.

Le Grand Macabre, by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti, is based on La Ballade du Grand Macabre by Michel de Ghelderode. From its first showing in Stockholm in 1978 it attained the highest echelons of the contemporary operatic repertoire.

Since then numerous productions have been staged in the world's leading opera houses. De Ghelderode's play (1934), inspired by medieval dances of death and Flemish painting (Pieter Brueghel and Hieronymus Bosch), was converted by librettist Michael Meschke and the composer himself into a scintillating and exuberant work belonging to the theatre of the absurd. Highly charged with ironical and grotesque elements, it is concerned with the end of the world and inhabited by Grand Guignol-type characters. Ligeti himself called it a «comic apocalypse». The music is a brilliant collage of styles (ranging from Monteverdi to Wagner and Verdi, via Beethoven and jazz). A mood of wild aggressiveness alternates with lyricism, while the enlarged orchestra features some unusual additions (motor horns and percussion instruments).

LE GRAND MACABRE IN THE NETWORK
- A spectacular scenery

- Le Grand Macabre - Opening Night - Adelaide Festival of Arts 2010

A SEVEN TONS WEIGT WOMAN BODY PLAYS IN THE LICEU
- The birth of Claudia

TAKE A LOOK TO THE SCENOGRAPHY

PHOTOS GALLERY
Gran Teatre del Liceu 19 November 2011 (Photos Menta Oregano)