Le grand macabre (1974–77, revised version 1996) is György Ligeti's only opera. The opera has two acts and its libretto – based on the 1934 play, La balade du grand macabre, by Michel De Ghelderode – was written by Ligeti in collaboration with Michael Meschke, director of the Stockholm puppet theatre. The original libretto was written in German, as Der grosse Makaber, but for the first production was translated into Swedish by Meschke under its current title (Griffiths and Searby 2003). The opera has been performed also in English, French, Italian, and Hungarian. Only a few notes need be changed to perform the opera in any of these languages.

Le grand macabre was premiered in Stockholm on 12 April 1978 (Griffiths and Searby 2003) and has received more than 30 productions (Everett 2009, 29). In preparation for a 1997 production at the Salzburg Festival, Ligeti made substantial revisions to the opera in 1996, tightening the structure by means of cuts in scenes 2 and 4, setting some of the originally spoken passages to music and removing others altogether (Griffiths and Searby 2003). The revised version was premiered in Salzburg on 28 July 1997, in a production directed by Peter Sellars (Steinitz 2003, 239). The composer was annoyed by Sellars's production, which opposed Ligeti's desire for ambiguity by explicitly depicting an apocalypse set in the framework of the Chernobyl disaster (Everett 2009, 29).