György Kurtág's Fin de partie [Endgame]

Can you imagine the thrill of seeing—for the first time—a newly composed opera in your own time? For every opera that is now a household name, a lucky audience was there at the premiere to witness the very first of thousands of performances. Today you can experience that feeling of discovery at Milan's hallowed La Scala, with the world premiere of a challenging and surprising opera that took the composer eight years to complete: Hungarian composer György Kurtág's Fin de partie.

Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Endgame—called the 20th century’s greatest prose drama by critic Harold Bloom—made its debut in opera form at La Scala in 2018 and, according to the New Yorker's Alex Ross, “Beckett has been waiting for Kurtág all this time.” What is Fin de partie about? If you know Waiting for Godot, the themes will be familiar: Hamm, his servant Clov, and Nagg and Nell (Hamm’s parents) are living together in the cramped space of a house by the sea, “all four waiting for an end to this static, claustrophobic situation with its lack of possible developments” (Cesare Fertonani) ...