Endgame, game over. With four characters, Hamm and his servants Clov, Hamm’s parents Nagg and Nell. A play with rules, rituals, memories, and words. Words that are sung, which has only been rarely done with Samuel Beckett’s texts. György Kurtág’s opera Fin de partie is the only full-length setting of one of his plays.

The Hungarian composer was fascinated by Beckett’s Endgame, which premiered in Paris in 1957, for more than half a century. In 2010, at the age of 85, Kurtág began composing his very first opera, which premiered at Milan’s Scala in 2018. In his musical language, he relies closely on Beckett’s original French text, which he opens to a fascinating space of sound with his delicate instrumentation. Here, Beckett’s predilections for the circus, amusement parks, and clownery resonate, as Johannes Erath foregrounds in his production.