Armel opera competition and festival looks forward to busy 2014

Budapest, December 27 (MTI) – The Armel opera competition and festival, which promotes Hungarian talent in international opera through co-productions, has expanded and is looking forward to exciting new productions in 2014, Armel’s founder and chief told MTI in an interview on Friday.

Agnes Havas highlighted this year’s production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle at the Autumn Festival in Normandy, which featured Hungarian soloists Adrienn Miksch and Krisztian Cser with the Pannon Philharmonic, conducted by Daniel Kawaka.

“It was good to see that the majority of the audience was young; so the French know something about educating audiences,” she said, adding that the response was overwhelming and no one would have thought that a work by Bartok would be received so enthusiastically.

Havas added a new Hungarian production would definitely take place at the Normandy festival next year, and the details would be decided on in January.

Besides the Hungarian state opera house, Armel Festival is the only Hungarian outfit to belong to the Opera Europa, and Armel has been working with French classical music channel Mezzo since its inception, she noted.

Armel has guaranteed funding for the next three years for its “basic activities” and will receive funding from the National Cultural Fund of 15 million forints between 2014 and 2016, she said.

In 2014, besides the competition held in the Szeged National Theatre, Armel will return to the Swiss Theatre Bienne Soleure for a performance of Christian Henking’s “Figaro?”. A new work by Gyula Csapo, Phaedra, by the Plzen company, will be premiered under the direction of Robert Alfoldi.

Plzen in the Czech Republic, one of the European capitals of culture in 2015, will be a host venue for Armel competition, Havas noted.

Further, the Vienna Neue Oper production of Harrison Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy will be performed in Hungary. A new partner is the Georgian State Opera House from Tbilisi, a new work by Zakaria Paliashvili will be premiered, she noted.

Photo: prae.hu

Source: http://hungarymatters.hu/