Halfway through the first piece in the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s programme at the Proms last night, the conductor Iván Fischer turned and addressed the audience: “Do I have to remove my shoes too?” No, he hadn’t taken leave of his senses. He was entering into the spirit of his compatriot György Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, a 10-minute extract from his anarchic, surrealist opera Le Grand Macabre.
At the start of the aria, the soprano Anna-Lena Elbert had threaded her way through the orchestra to the stage, removing her own shoes in the process, and declaiming her nonsense text in the persona of the chief of the Secret Political Police. Her virtuoso delivery was appropriately humorous, even if that humour often has a sinister edge. The orchestral players also joined in the fun, muttering and sputtering, while ostentatiously crumpling paper sacks.
