The end of the world was on the program Thursday night — but for the New York Philharmonic, performing the apocalyptic opera “Le Grand Macabre” was a promising new beginning.
Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti’s dissonant, absurdist 1978 opera is one of the most popular modern works in Europe, but it’s never played New York until now. The overdue premiere won a warm reception when the sold-out crowd at Avery Fisher Hall rose to cheer both the work and the performers.
In a Philharmonic first, the opera was fully staged, the singers cavorting in glam-rock costumes among the orchestra and even out in the auditorium. Director Doug Fitch conjured views of hell and Earth with witty handmade models projected on a giant screen above the stage.
In this Monty Pythonesque tale, the sorcerer Nekrotzar (a k a The Grand Macabre) rises from his tomb to destroy the Earth — only to pass out drunk before triggering Doomsday. An amorous young couple merges from the tomb with a message: Make love, not planetary apocalypse.
Ligeti’s music, known from such films as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Eyes Wide Shut,” merges brash brass fanfares with nervous string buzzings. For this work, he augments the percussion with car horns, doorbells and gunshots.
Conductor Alan Gilbert unfurled this vast soundscape with firm control. The Philharmonic’s brass section deserves its own curtain call for its superhuman endurance in the bombastic score.
Among the energetic cast, the standout was Anthony Roth Costanzo as the bumbling Prince Go-Go, balancing a vibrant countertenor with quirky comic timing. Mark Schowalter’s tenor deftly spanned the extreme range of Nekrotzar’s drinking buddy Piet, and Barbara Hannigan’s coloratura soprano easily fluttered into dog-whistle territory as the nervous spy, Gepopo.
As Mescalina, Melissa Parks combined a firm mezzo-soprano with the high-camp mugging one would expect in the role of a sex-starved dominatrix.
In the long and demanding part of Nekrotzar, Eric Owens’ bass-baritone shifted in and out of focus, but he looked and acted every inch the evil genius, with a sneer Vincent Price would have envied.