Le Grand Macabre

The opera takes place in the completely degenerate but recklessly flourishing dukedom of Breugelland. […] The opera’s main character is Nekrozar, the Grand Macabre, a sinister, demagogic and dubious figure with an unshakable sense of mission. He maintains that he is the figure of Death who has come to Breugelland in order to wipe out the entire population and thereby also the whole of mankind with the aid of a comet that very day at midnight. Although he enters the ducal palace with great pomp to proclaim his apocalyptic threats with supreme confidence, he becomes caught up in the maelstrom of the all too worldly goings-on of the people of Breugelland and, with the aid of the court astrologer and his drinking partner Piet vom Fass, becomes so inebriated […] that his loftily declaimed proclamation on the imminent end of the world falls totally flat. The intoxicated people of Breugelland believe themselves to have already arrived in heaven, but it gradually becomes clear that life in heaven is identical to that on earth. Everyone is still alive after all and only Nekrozar, the Grand Macabre, dies from grief that he has failed in his crusade. If he were Death himself, then Death is now dead, eternal life has begun and earth is at one with heaven: the Last Judgement has taken place. Should he however merely have been a conceited charlatan and a dark and false messiah and his mission merely empty words, life will continue as normal – one day everyone will die, but not today, not immediately.’ (György Ligeti; source: Salzburg Festival 1997)