Le Grand Macabre (completed 1977, revised 1996) is the third stage production by Hungarian composer György Ligeti, and his only major stage-work.

Its libretto, based on Michel de Ghelderode's 1934 play La balade du Grand Macabre, was written by Ligeti himself in collaboration with Michael Meschke [sv], director of the Stockholm Puppet Theatre.

[2] Besides these two languages, Le Grand Macabre has been performed in English, French, Italian, Hungarian and Danish, with only a few notes needing to be changed in order to adjust.

[3] For one in Paris in February 1997 (under the auspices of that summer's Salzburg Festival), Ligeti the previous year prepared a revision, making cuts to Scenes 2 and 4, setting some of the originally spoken passages to music and removing others altogether.

Conductors who have championed Le Grand Macabre include Elgar Howarth,[5] Esa-Pekka Salonen,[6] Michael Boder,[7] Alan Gilbert,[8] Sir Simon Rattle,[9] Thomas Guggeis, who led a new staging by Vasily Barkhatov in November 2023 at Oper Frankfurt,[10][11] and Pablo Heras-Casado, who conducted a different new production a week later at the Vienna State Opera.

As the overture ends, Piet the Pot, "by trade wine taster", in the country of Breughelland (named after the artist that loosely inspired it), appears to deliver a drunken lament, complete with hiccups.

As Nekrotzar's threats grow deadlier, Piet accepts them with only amused servility, until he is told his throat is to be "wracked with thirst".

As Nekrotzar explains his mission, accompanied by percussive tone clusters in the lowest octave of the piano and the orchestra, a choir joins in, admonishing "take warning now, at midnight thou shalt die".

Nekrotzar, making frenzied proclamations, dons his gruesome gear, accompanied by ever more chaotic orchestra, women's choir, and a bass trombone hidden on a balcony, his characteristic instrument.

As they ride off on their quest, the lovers emerge and sing another duet, vowing to ignore the end of time completely and enjoy each other's company.

As punishment for attempting to fake death, she forces him to take part in an apparent household ritual, a rhythmic dance termed "the Gallopade".

Nekrotzar suddenly bites Mescalina's neck, killing her, and insists that Piet and his new servant "move this thing [her corpse] out of the way".

Driving triplets launch into the trio's humorous rant, "fire and death I bring, burning and shrivelling".

The curtain opens to the throne room, where two politicians dance a lopsided waltz and exchange insults in alphabetical order.

The snare drum leads variations of military march-like music as the politicians contradict one another's advice, finally telling the prince "cavalry charge!"

When Go-go puts on the crown, the politicians order him to memorize a speech and sign a decree (which raises taxes 100%), arguing over every insignificant issue the whole time.

The prince grows hungry, so the politicians tempt him with a gluttonous feast (to which the fat but boyish monarch sings an impassioned ode).

Their slow chant is gradually accelerated and its rhythm and intervals transformed, drowning out the Prince's remarks (only his gestures are visible).

However, Gepopo receives a dispatch (a comic process in which every spy inspects and authenticates it by pantomime) and warns Go-go with more code language that a comet is drawing closer and a true Macabre is approaching.

The politicians try to play it off as alarmism but promptly flee the stage when a solitary figure approaches from the direction of the city gate.

The processional takes the form of a passacaglia, with a repeating pattern in timpani and low strings (who play a parodic imitation of Movement 4 from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony), a scordatura violin (playing a twisted imitation of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer"), bassoon, sopranino clarinet, and piccolo marching with the procession, and slowly building material in the orchestra.

He presents death prophecies such as "the bodies of men will be singed, and all will be turned into charr'd corpses, and shrink like shriveled heads!"

"Demolished great kings and queens in scores / no one could escape my claws / Socrates a poison chalice / Nero a knife in his palace."

He retains only a shred of his formerly terrifying nature, but the end of the world is represented by a rough threnody in strings followed by swelling crescendos and decrescendos in the winds.

They order the "civilian" to halt, and refuse to believe Go-go's claim that he is the prince and he will give them "high decorations, silver and gold, and relieve [them] of official duties".

Yet, as Andreas Dorschel argues, Ligeti and librettist Michael Meschke enact an intertwinement of dystopia and utopia, in a series of moves and countermoves: (1) Death threatens to eliminate all life.

Ligeti/Meschkeʼs subversion of the antinomy of utopia and dystopia, introduced in the opening “Breughellandlied”, turns out to be in the spirit of Piet the Potʼs namesake Pieter Bruegel the Elder, as Dorschelʼs interpretation of his 1567 painting Het Luilekkerland, an inspiration already to de Ghelderode, shows.

[15] Le Grand Macabre falls at a point when Ligeti's style was undergoing a significant change—apparently effecting a complete break with his approach in the 1960s.

From here onward, Ligeti adopts a more eclectic manner, re-examining tonality and modality (in his own words, "non-atonal" music).

The music instead is driven by quotation and pastiche, plundering past styles through allusions to Claudio Monteverdi, Gioachino Rossini, and Giuseppe Verdi.