György Ligeti includes in his opera Le Grand Macabre all the stylistic achievements of his earlier orchestral and chamber music works. Some passages that Ligeti himself calls reflections, not quotations allude to Monteverdi, Mozart, Stravinsky, Rossini, Verdi, or Beethoven. They are not inserted as collage-like citations, but represent a reflective retrospection on the operatic genre.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Andreas Giger