By David Patrick Stearns [Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 May 2010]
NEW YORK – If ever an opera could cause brain damage, it’s Gyorgy Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre. If ever the destruction of gray matter could be utterly pleasurable, it was Thursday at Avery Fisher Hall, when the New York Philharmonic staged this bizarre end-of-the-world comedy – an event that may signify several important cultural turning points.