End Times Revisited

The vein of satire running through Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre is arguably less absurd and more uncomfortably close to reality in 2017 than it would have been in the relative sanity of 1997, when the revised version had its première in Salzburg, or even perhaps in the dog days of the cold war when the work first appeared. Indeed its end-of-days scenario seems to mirror the gloomy mood, shared by anyone who begins their day with a survey of the major newspapers, that the world is marching toward some great catastrophe and that we are all powerless to stop it. Yet for all its darkness, Ligeti’s lone opera remains a work of potty-mouthed exuberance and caustic wit whose black humour can and should be played for all it’s worth.

Although the recent semi-staged performance by the Berlin Philharmonic – conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and directed by…