opera

Budapest is the city of music – Mini concerts still avaible

The Budapest Festival and Tourism Center organises again the free outdoor concert series with the title “Budapest, the City of Music” at historic locations of the capital city, budapest.info said.

The project was a huge success last year, thousands of visitors could enjoy the surprise concerts in different districts of Budapest.

The first concerts of the program series await the audience on May 27, at ten locations of Budapest, and the program ends with performances scheduled for August 14. Overall there are going be 520 mini – concerts.

During the “Budapest, the City of Music” program series, numerous artists perform chamber music concerts – written especially for the occasion and evoking different beautiful historical locations – including masterpieces of the history of music, such as those of Ferenc Erkel, Ferenc Liszt, Brahms, Rossini, Mozart, or Händel.

All the performing artists are members of excellent orchestras of Budapest (such as, the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, the Danube Symphony Orchestra, the Hungarian Radio Symphonic Orchestra, the Concerto Budapest), who regularly play chamber music together.

15-20-minute mini live concerts await the audience for free at the outdoor venues, who can enjoy the outdoor concerts on performance days, that is, on the three days of the weekend – on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at subsequent hours.

At the concert venues, event bulletin boards displaying the complete program help those interested.g masterpieces of the history of music, such as those of Ferenc Erkel, Ferenc Liszt, Brahms, Rossini, Mozart, or Händel.

Get more information HERE and HERE.

Billy Elliot – The Musical at the Opera House

The Hungarian State Opera announced it in Februray 2015 that the musical by Lee Hall and Grammy Award winner Sir Elton John would be included in the repertoire. The piece is based on the three times Oscar-nominated film Billy Elliot, which tells the story of a talented boy born into a poor family who are against his wish to become a ballet dancer.

Billy-Elliot_240It’s 1984. In England’s mining towns, life is in upheaval: it is the time of the strikes. Eleven-year-old Billy Elliot lives in one of these towns. His father and older brother have joined the picket line to fight for a better living. His mother is dead. Following in the family tradition, the boy attends boxing lessons, but this violent sport doesn’t suit him much. One day he happens upon the girls at their ballet class and is smitten by the dancing. Will a young boy’s artistic talent be able to bring the family and the community together? Will Billy succeed in making his dreams come true?

This musical adaptation which has delighted audiences around the world is the collaboration between Sir Elton John and the winning team behind the original 2000 feature film. The Hungarian State Opera presents it in a non-replica production directed by Tamás Szirtes, and with choreography by Ákos Tihanyi.

An all-star cast is featured in the new production of Billy Elliot – The Musical that will have its premiere at the Opera House. Later, more series at the Erkel Theatre will feature in the programme of the next season. The musical has been seen by more than 5 million people in London since its 2005 premiere, and 11 million people worldwide. For the Hungarian production popular Hungarian stage actors, Judit Ladinek, Nikolett Gallusz, Éva Auksz, András Stohl, Sándor Tóth, Kristóf Németh, Boglárka Simon, Renáta Krassy, Eszter Balla, Eszter Csákányi, Ilona Bencze and Ildikó Hűvösvölgyi have been cast in the adult roles of the production.

The title role is extremely difficult as it requires the child actors to be able to say prose, sing and dance including step and ballet. The cast of the premiere and the subsequent performances was announced following a year-long series of casting that began on 7 March, 2015. About 100 children aged 9 to 12 arrived to the casting from all over Hungary and beyond, later another 50 arrived. There was even one who was only 7.

The jury consisted of Tamás Solymosi, director of the Hungarian National Ballet, director Tamás Szirtes, vocal teacher Mária Toldy, choreographer Ákos Tihanyi, as well as the two conductors of the production: Géza Köteles and István Silló. The final exam took place on 10 February, when new members joined the panel: György Szakály, rector of the Hungarian Dance Academy, Gyula Sárközi, manager of the Madách Musical Dance School, Mónika Barna, docent of the Hungarian Dance Academy, ballet master Pál Csillag, and all those teachers who had helped the children prepare for a year. As in the first year the Hungarian State Opera plans to put the musical seventy times on stage, the board chose seven “Billys” and five “Michaels”. In addition, 29 girls aged 9 to 12 are also going to be featured in the production.

For more production details CLICK HERE.

Hungarian State Opera announces 2016/17 Hungarian season

The Hungarian State Opera is again offering more than 2000 programmes in the new season. The Hungarian Season will feature pieces by countless major Hungarian composers, choreographers and directors, while over the course of a few weeks, the May Festival will showcase two centuries of Hungarian opera history, from József Ruzitska to Levente Gyöngyösi. In addition to the 28 opera and ballet premieres being added to the enormous classical repertoire, the season will also include a steady stream of musicals, grand operettas, concerts, talk programmes as well as interactive family and children’s programmes.

PREMIERES

On the penultimate weekend of September 2016, as the summer break comes to a close, life will return to the Opera House and the Erkel Theatre. At the Erkel, fans of contemporary dance will be rewarded with Johan Inger’s choreography Rain Dogs, while the Opera House, as in previous years, will be opening its doors in the context of a grand season opener: following the usual open-air commedia dell’arte chamber operas, Ferenc Anger’s new production of La traviata, with Erika Miklósa and Polina Pasztircsák in the principle roles, will move into the palace of opera on Andrássy Avenue after being given its summer pre-premiere on Margaret Island.

To put it all into numbers: with 28 brand-new productions (including six world and six Hungarian premieres), there will be a total of 450 full-scale performances comprising an additional 60 repertoire pieces, 100 concerts, chamber performances and gala, event and festival productions, 200 children’s programmes, 600 building tours, and more than 1,000 ambassadorial presentations. All in all, the 800,000-strong audience can look forward to more than 2,500 attractions taking place in some 20 different venues in the 2016/17 season.

The public will be seeing many of the premieres for the first time: Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites and the ballet Le Corsaire, choreographed to music by Adam, have never been listed on the Opera programme. In 2017, we willl be giving the Hungarian audience their first look at Péter Eötvös’s opera Love and Other Demons. The string of world premieres include unique productions such as Love, inspired by the Károly Makk film, A Streetcar Named Desire set to music by László Dés, a practically unknown opera fragment by Mozart, as well as a composition by Rautavaara – The Mine – that has never before been performed on any of the world’s opera stages.

The extraordinarily broad offering of operas again includes a few popular pieces that are being renewed: The Spinning Room, Lucia di Lammermoor and Bánk bán will all be mounted in productions stamped with the names of directors Michał Znaniecki, Máté Szabó and Attila Vidnyánszky, while Géza M. Tóth continues to direct the Ring cycle with Siegfried.

For the complete list of premieres CLICK HERE.

INTERNATIONAL STARS

Throughout the course of the season, a number of world stars will arrive in Hungary for solo recitals, including Edita Gruberová and Renée Fleming, as well as René Pape, one of the world’s most soughtafter basses, who will be appearing in this country for the first time with a recital of arias on the stage of the Opera House. Returning to sing opera arias for the centenary of the birth of legendary Hungarian tenor József Simándy will be star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who this time will be making his debut on the stage of the Erkel. The ranks of our internationally renowned artists also include our Hungarian luminaries Andrea Rost, Erika Miklósa, Ildikó Komlósi, Csilla Boross, Levente Molnár and Gábor Bretz, who will be appearing in countless roles.

Beside them, around 120 Hungarian artists will be taking the stage alongside visitors from abroad such as Iréne Theorin, Erwin Schrott, Rafel Rojas, Leo Nucci, Tommi Hakala, Tetiana Zhuravel, Jürgen Sacher, Egils Silins, Kamen Chanev, Kristian Benedikt, Ivan Magrì, Michael Kupfer, Marcus Jupither, Karine Babajanyan and Marcello Giordani: every one of them a star of the international opera world.

With more than a century and a half of century of history behind it, the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra will, at concerts organised on significant dates, pay homage to the memory of major Hungarian artists like Zoltán Kodály, Miklós Ybl, György Cziffra, as well as János (Hans) Richter, a conductor who enjoyed the confidence of both Wagner and Liszt. The globe-trotting Hungarian conductors taking the podium at performances during the 2016/17 season will be joined by a total of 15 of their colleagues from abroad, including Philippe Auguin, Christian Badea, Paolo Carignani, Marco Comin, Alessandro De Marchi, Ion Marin and Pinchas Steinberg, as well as by Péter Eötvös, who will conduct his own opera.

The 2016/17 season holds plenty of excitement in store for ballet fans as well. In addition to the popular repertoire pieces of the Hungarian National Ballet, we’ll be premiering a number of classical and contemporary pieces in productions from choreographers like Johan Inger, Anna-Marie Holmes, Pál Frenák and Marianna Venekei. The Iván Nagy International Ballet Gala, being organised for the third time in 2017, will again draw luminaries from European ballet life, while DanceTrend and Pas de Quatre, in which dance companies from outside of Budapest take the stage of the Erkel Theatre, will each be welcoming audiences for the fourth such occasions.

EIFFEL ART STUDIOS

The Opera’s new rehearsal, manufacturing and warehouse complex, the Eiffel Art Studios will open in June of 2017 with the reconstruction of L’oca del Cairo, a hitherto unknown opera of Mozart’s, but visitors will be able to get a glimpse of the brand-new theatre auditorium, the Bánffy Stage as early as May, when they will be welcomed to both an aria recital being held as part of the Chorus Singers’ Mini-Festival and a fairytale opera by Ferenc Farkas.
The Eiffel works, once capable of repairing as many as 96 steam locomotives at a time, will perform additional functions as well. There will be a restaurant operating in the teak wood interior of an antique rail car, and visitors will be able to marvel at a legendary Mávag 301 steam locomotive. A costume rental facility will open, and this is also where we are establishing the Opera’s training facilities: the Opera Music School and the Hungarian National Ballet Institute. The building’s designer, János Feketeházy, worked on other projects other than these works: he also is credited with the Opera House’s steel roof structure. His work is being honoured by the memorial hall being named after him.

The development of the Eiffel Art Studios means that three hectares of green space can be redeemed from the demolished ruins, which means that a park can be created, to be used for, among other things, spending theatre intermissions in proximity to nature, while a playground is also being constructed around the environmentally conscious facility. The inauguration of the park will mark the end of the second major development in the history of the nation’s greatest cultural institute since 1984: the Eiffel Art Studios project, to be followed immediately by a third: the modernisation of the great palace on Andrássy Avenue…

Hungarian State Opera: Shakespeare400+ Festival is coming soon

With the end of the Shakespeare season approaching, the Hungarian State Opera will be organising its biggest festival ever – and certainly its most varied – between May 17 and 2 June 2016.

While it won’t be easy to exceed the scale of 2014’s Strauss150 festival or the scope of the previous year’s series on the theme of Faust, the unmatched influence of the “Swan of Avon” nevertheless ensures that this year will see premieres of 17 different adaptations at three different venues (the Opera House, Erkel Theatre, and the Music Academy), most of them more than once, and with several Hungarian premieres among them as well.

Programme of the Shakespeare400+ Festival

Purcell: The Fairy Queen – 18 May 2016, Erkel Theatre
Excerpts from the new production

Bernstein: West Side Story – 22, 26 May 2016, Erkel Theatre
Musical
Conductor: István Dénes
Director: Péter Novák
Cast: Boldizsár László, András Káldi Kiss, Lúcia Megyesi Schwartz

Gounod: Roméo et Juliette – 28 May 2016, Erkel Theatre
Concert version
Conductor: Christian Badea
Cast: Ivan Magri, Zita Szemere, László Szvétek, Csaba Szegedi, Ágnes Anna Kun, Gábor Bretz, Gergely Boncsér, Éva Balatoni, Tamás Busa, Lajos Geiger

Seregi–Goldmark–Hidas: The Taming of the Shrew – 18, 20 May 2016, Opera House Ballet
Conductor: István Silló
Choreographer: László Seregi
Featuring the artists of the Hungarian National Ballet

Szokolay: Hamlet – 19 May 2016, Erkel Theatre
Concert version and live CD-recording
Conductor: János Kovács

Verdi: Falstaff – 20, 22 May 2016, Erkel Theatre
Opera
Conductor: Marcus Bosch
Director: Arnaud Bernard
Cast: Ambrogio Maestri, Na Gunyong, Péter Balczó, Zoltán Megyesi, Géza Gábor, János Szerekován, Beatrix Fodor, Orsolya Sáfár, Bernadett Wiedemann, Erika Gál

Adès: The Tempest – 21, 25, 28 May, 1 June 2016, Opera House
Hungarian premiere
Conductor: Péter Halász
Director: Ludger Engels
Cast: Franco Pomponi, Erika Miklósa, István Horváth, Andrea Szántó, Péter Balczó, István Kovácsházi, Tamás Tarjányi, Krisztián Cser, Zsolt Haja, András Palerdi

Verdi: Macbeth – 22, 26 May 2016, Opera House
Opera
Conductor: Renato Palumbo
Director: Miklós Szinetár
Cast: Lado Ataneli, István Rácz, Szilvia Rálik, Nadin Haris, István Kovácsházi, Gergely Boncsér, Ferenc Cserhalmi, Sándor Egri

Nicolai: The Merry Wives of Windsor – 24, 31 May 2016, Erkel Theatre
Singspiel
Musical direction: Dániel Erdélyi
Featuring the artists of the Hungarian State Opera Choir

Bellini: The Capulets and the Montagues – 23 May 2016, Erkel Theatre
Concert version
Conductor: György Vashegyi
Cast: Klára Kolonits, Szilvia Vörös, András Palerdi, Gyula Rab, András Kiss
Featuring the Dohnányi Orchestra, Budafokand the National Choir

Verdi: Otello – 24, 27 May 2016, Opera House
Opera
Conductor: Gergely Madaras
Director: Stefano Poda
Cast: Roberto Aronica, Andrea Rost, Mihály Kálmándi, Judit Németh, Gergely Boncsér

Britten: A Midsummer Night’s Dream – 27, 29 May 2016, Music Academy
Opera
Conductor: Dominic Wheeler
Director: Máté Szabó
Featuring the students of the Liszt Ferenc Music Academy

Wolf-Ferrari: Sly – 27, 29 May 2016, Erkel Theatre
Opera
Conductor: Sándor Gyüdi
Director: Pál Göttinger
Cast: Boldizsár László, Zoltán Kelemen, Krisztina Kónya, Antal Cseh

Reimann: Lear – 29, 31 May 2016, Opera House
Opera
Conductor: Stefan Soltész
Director: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Staged by: Ferenc Anger
Cast: Tómas Tómasson, István Kovács, Zsolt Haja, Gergely Ujvári, István Kovácsházi, András Palerdi, Barnabás Hegyi, Dániel Vadász, Éva Bátori, Szilvia Rálik, Eszter Sümegi

Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra concert – 30 May 2016, Opera House
Dvořák: Otello Overture
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy – Overture
Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream – incidental music
Conductor: Arthur Fagen

Bryn Terfel Recital – 2 June 2016, Opera House
Conductor: Gareth Jones
Featuring: Bryn Terfel

Budapest is also among world’s most beautiful operas

According to index.hu, David Leventi photographed forty operas of nineteen countries from a rarely seen perspective in eight years. Budapest is also among the forty most beautiful.

Placido Domingo wrote the preface of the book, in which David Leventi photographed the most beautiful opera houses of the world. “David has traveled the world trying to catch the essence of these music churches, and thus he himself has created art. It’s clear that the pictures were taken by someone who has not only a good eye, but a good ear as well”.

For the recently-published book, David Leventi photographed 40 opera houses of 19 countries in eight years. From the inside. Everyone knows the opera houses from outside, many people have already passed by the Budapest opera, but the fewer were inside, in the auditorium.

According to index.hu, the large-format images focus on the architectural details, not by chance: the parents of the photographers are architects so he knew what to watch for. “It was almost a religious experience for me when I walked in these big spaces”.

Most of the photos were taken from the middle of the stage, so from the perspective of the opera singers, from which visitors have little chance to contemplate. The auditorium, the stage and the orchestra pit are always empty, only to pay attention to the building and its decorating. Opera houses are very diverse, there are beautiful, fancy, ornate and completely cleared. “But each of them is full of energy and you feel something great will happen in them. I think performance is only part of the experience, when we go to the opera. The space itself also plays an important role.” – Leventi wrote.

The photographer is tied to opera by his family as well: his grandfather was cantor Anton Gutman who studied with the famous Danish tenor Helge Rosvaenge after World War 2. The two of them met in a Soviet prison camp, where Gutman performed many times. After war, however, he did not continue to sing, but Leventi remembers he always sang in the living room while walking. In the photos of Levente, it seems as he would want to show the stages for his grandfather who had never had the chance to get to, index.hu said.

The 40 most beautiful included the Scala in Milano, Metropolitan in New York, Palais Garnier in Paris, London’s Royal Opera, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the Royal Swedish Opera, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Opera House and of course, the Budapest Opera House, which was visited by the photographer in 2008.

The photos are also exhibited in New York along with the publishing of the book.

translated by BA

Photo: MTI

State Opera commemorates opening of Hungarian-Austrian border

Budapest, September 5 (MTI) – The Hungarian State Opera House is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Austrian-Hungarian border with an international conference on Friday and a gala featuring renowned singers Anja Kampe, Piotr Beczala, Ferruccio Furlanetto and Andrea Rost on the day after.

Opera House director Szilveszter Ókovács told the press on Friday that the Ungarn fur Deutschland – Opera for Europe conference has attracted more than 40 guests from 20 countries.

Saturday’s open-air programme will start on the opera’s Sphinx terrace where the comic operas The Night Bell by Donizetti and The Telephone by Menotti will be performed, to be followed by a free concert of international opera stars.

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Deputy state secretary for international and European relations at the Ministry for Human Resources Gergely Pröhle said Hungary’s opera had always aspired to be part of the international music scene even before the change of the regime.

“It is impossible to separate by an Iron Curtain opera performance in the west and in the east,” he said.

Neue Oper Wien artistic director Walter Kobera said that 25 years ago, some important changes were introduced also in Vienna’s art life and in recent years close links have been developed with Hungary.

Photo: MTI – Zoltán Máthé

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