I do wish English National Opera would remember what it’s called and, mindful of its status as the only English-language opera company we have, translate opera titles into English as well as singing them in that language. There was no reason for Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin not to be given as Love from afar, nor for Donizetti’s Lucia to be ‘of’ rather than ‘di’ Lammermoor. Ligeti’s Le grand macabre is, admittedly, harder to render and may perhaps be allowed as an honourable exception, along with the untranslatable Così fan tutte. Rehearsals for the Ligeti opera, which opens the new season at ENO on 17 September, are currently being conducted in a mixture of Catalan and English, under the auspices of the Fura dels Baus company, known for its wild and wonderful theatrical events, often on a massive scale.
In the case of Le grand macabre, this sort of scale is manifest in a gigantic figure of a crouching woman, known as Claudia, upon, through, over and around which the performers will clamber, crawl, slide and swing.
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