Many writers in the twentieth century explored the
idea of nothingness, but few mapped out its contours as exactingly as Samuel
Beckett, whose major works of the 1950s stripped away everything inessential in
their pursuit of absolute nullity. Of those great works, it is Fin de Partie,
first performed in 1957, which seems the most perfect distillation of Beckett’s
aesthetic, a taut evocation of life hovering at the very edge of non-existence.
Although its dialogue is spare and there is little in the way of obvious
incident, it manages to encompass its own universe of elusive emotions and
unforgettable images.
György Kurtág’s Fin de Partie – which opened
recently at the Opéra national de Paris in the Pierre Audi production which had
its world première at La Scala in 2018 – is not, strictly speaking, an
adaptation. Although it shares its…
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