Berlin Music Festival | »Le Grand Macabre«: The great disorder

Now it's getting absurd: "Le Grand Macabre" at the Berlin Music Festival. Photo: Fabian Schellhorn It is a spooky and crazy funeral procession that winds its way across the gallery to the auditorium and finally onto the stage of the Philharmonie: in the lead is the sinister, shady Necrotzar, the Great Macabre, who claims to be Death itself. Other hellish figures follow him, supported by a combo of E-flat clarinet, flute, bassoon and violin. A simple fanfare of heavenly trumpets sounds from a distance - the apocalypse is near, Nekrotzar announces loudly. And from the other side of the gallery the choir pleads: “Kill everyone else, but me, me, me, don’t kill me!”

György Ligeti's anti-anti-opera, which premiered in 1978 in a first version and in 1997 in the new version that has been binding since then, which, according to the composer, distances itself "both from the opera ideal of the 19th century and from the anti-opera of the recent past", is heading towards its climax in this third picture. Until then, we had been able to experience all sorts of absurdities in the completely run-down, but still carefree partying Breughelland "in so many centuries" (after we were supposed to rise to the supposed national anthem of this state).

There is the always drunk Piet vom Fass (fabulous singing and acting: Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke). Next to them are the wonderful lovers Amanda and Amando (Elisabeth Freyhoff and Jingjing Xu) looking for an undisturbed place to make love (which they will eventually find in an empty grave). Likewise the dominant Mescalina, who whips her husband Astradamors, the court astronomer, attacks her with a skewer and finally forces her to eat a large spider - a wonderfully absurd scene of bourgeois senselessness and twisted eroticism.

Finally, the Necrotzar (darkly wild, an impressive baritone: Leigh Melrose), who has risen from an opened grave, bites the neck like a vampire and confidently announces the end of the world. Astradamor returns to his house again and destroys the entire furnishings: "Finally master of his own house!"

Everything turns into a farce here: drinking, sexual desires, violent fantasies, murder. The class that is to blame for the distortions, for the “great disorder,” is completely disinhibited. Ligeti describes a “broken, drunken, whorish world of the imaginary Breughelland.” In the third picture, the grotesqueness is expanded to include the regent of Breughelland, the "voracious, babyish Prince Go-Go" (countertenor Andrew Watts), who is tyrannized by "his two corrupt ministers, the leaders of the warring white and black parties." These two indulge in endless insults to one another throughout the entire alphabet, from Asslicker and Duckwanster to Gurkenzwerg and Kloakensnott to Zwerchpfinschler (only I, J, W, X and Y can't think of anything for them).

The delicate and eminently witty visual design of this concert performance by Sasha Balmazi-Owen has the ministers acting in oversized, pot-bellied disguises that force them to move like puppets. This makes them even more absurd, ridiculously self-important figures - Herbert Fritsch also used this device in his 2017 Lucerne production.

A highlight is certainly the appearance of the head of the secret political police "Gepopo" with his entourage, "weird and ghostly detectives, torturers and executioners", and secret police parade in front of the stage and in the ranks. Sarah Aristidou as the police chief with Scissorhands makes a brilliant appearance, ending in a stuttered “Khh… Khk. Kh! Kh! Ka! Ka-Ka! “Kakakakakakastrophe!” ends. Significantly, the politicians are leaving: “We’re leaving. Bye, prince! And goodnight!”

The Berlin Festival, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, has offered theme days under the motto “The Great Disorder”. The Sudanese-British author Nesrine Malik and the economic historian Adam Tooze spoke at the opening in the Berlin Festival House. They analyzed the economic, political and moral influence of the “West” and spoke about how authoritarian forces are gaining weight even in formerly liberal societies. There is a dialectical intertwining of modernity and violence, guidelines such as international law are being shelved. Governments have long since withdrawn from any interventionism, and political and intellectual leadership is no longer present, especially in times of climate catastrophe, global inequality and rampant wars. “Le Grand Macabre,” so to speak.

In the opening speech by Winrich Hopp, the artistic director of the music festival, as well as in the digital program booklet, reference was made to the current references to the Ligeti opera, especially to the “globally authoratarism” (Dirk Wieschollek). But perhaps this explanation falls short. In view of the pressing world problems and in a summer of global climate escalation, a Breughelland in which corrupt politicians declare the constitution to be "empty paper" while forcing the prince to sign "ever new decrees increasing taxes ad infinitum" is almost a warning sign. Otherwise, these politicians are having a really good time and throwing empty words at each other without making any decisions to save humanity. Germany is also Breughelland!

The scenes that Ligeti and his co-librettist Michael Meschke conjure up after Michel de Ghelderode's "La Balade du Grand Macabre" from 1934 use words and images that could hardly be more timely: "A great heat will come, as if from a thousand suns, and the waters of the seas will evaporate, the mountains will burst with a great bang, and the air will burn like denatured alcohol, and the human race will be scorched."

Ligeti designed a very simplified, comic-like stage event. He saw his opera more “in the tradition of the medieval Dance of Death, the mystery and Punch and Judy plays.” The characters are explicitly designed to be “non-psychological”. “The plot, situations, characters should be brought to life through the music, the stage events and music should be dangerous, bizarre, completely exaggerated, completely crazy,” he demanded.

The great Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (the extraordinary percussionists deserve to be highlighted: Kazutaka Morita, Jani Niinimäki, Antti Ohenoja, Naoki Yasuda!) under its fantastic conductor Nicholas Collon, the Helsinki Chamber Choir and the Berlin vocal heroes as well as the outstanding soloist ensemble simply achieve a musical miracle. From the beginning, the mockery of the usual overture through a concert with twelve car horns, to the many musical allusions - motivic material from Rameau's "La Poule", Schubert's "Grätzer Gallop", the ball scene from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" - to self-quotations from his legendary orchestral compositions "Atmosphéres" and "Lontano".

Ligeti's music was performed with true skill but also with the greatest passion. Because ultimately this music is extremely sensual, almost seductive. And as such it was understood by the audience at this performance, who thanked her with sustained applause.

And at the end? Did Ligeti's strange characters actually experience the end of the world? Finally, a Mahlerian wooden hammer fell on his block with a piercing crash. “Didn’t I just destroy the entire world?” asks the savage Necrotzar, who, disappointed, mutates into an ever-shrinking ball that finally disappears into the ground. Maybe the end of the world was just a trick we fell for?

After an all-out brawl, everyone ends up lying on the floor, exhausted from the Beckett-esque endgame. Meanwhile, Piet, Astradamor and the prince happily drink wine - "We are thirsty: therefore we are alive." The party continues, everyone sings together with the choir: “Don’t fear death, good people!” At some point it will come, but not today." So: an eternal "Keep it up", partying and drinking without end.

Only the lovers Amando and Amanda in two white plush sweaters sewn together (a big A on the front, a big O on the back) didn't notice the supposed end of the world; the two lived their love in the grave: "The best thing there is is when you love each other thoroughly. When you do that, time stands still: there is only eternity.«

Maybe that is our salvation, maybe love is the be-all and end-all that makes it possible to continue living in the great disorder and the great macabre. The optimism of the will with pessimism of the mind, as Gramsci wrote. In any case, Ligeti's opera ends with an enchanted, "measured and elegant" passacaglia, "the sunlight becomes paler and turns into an unearthly light." We are left astonished.

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