Theatre
La Balade du Grand Macabre
Not translated into English
Michel de Ghelderode · 1934
Synopsis
Breughellande, an imaginary land whose name evokes Bruegel, a country of fairs and good food. A strange figure appears there, Nekrozotar, who claims to be Death in person and rides a pot-bellied drunkard, Porprenaz. He comes to announce to the inhabitants that the end of the world is near. The author made a play of it, which he subtitled a farce for rhetoricians, the least biting of his farces according to Roland Beyen and Michel Otten, drawing on puppet theatre, carnival and Flemish painting.
Context
Written in 1934, the play develops a farce for marionettes published ten years earlier, which the author said was inspired by a show seen in 1919 at the marionette theatre in the rue Haute, in the Marolles. Published in 1935, it was first staged in 1953, in Lyon by Roger Planchon then in Paris by René Dupuy under the title La Grande Kermesse, and the author refused to go and see it. György Ligeti drew from it the opera Le Grand Macabre, premiered in Stockholm on 12 April 1978, which made the play known throughout the world.
Who it is for
A long, visual farce, in a language laden with archaisms and neologisms; accessible in a paperback edition.
Prizes and reception
One of its author's most frequently performed plays, especially in Poland, Germany, Austria and Belgium.