Eliconie

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. Furthermore, a new venue is set to open in June 2017.
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 will 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.
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 Theatre. 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.
The Hungarian State Opera is also the home of the Hungarian National Ballet and the oldest orchestra in Hungary, the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra – the orchestra of the Opera (established in 1853). The Hungarian National Ballet prepares with a brand new staging of Don Quixote, the Hungarian premiere of Johan Inger’s Rain Dogs, and to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the premiere of Bartók’s The Wooden Prince, a new version by Pál Frenák is put on stage. The Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra gives several concerts throughout the season led by excellent guest conductors like Philippe Auguin, Christian Badea, Paolo Carignani, Marco Comin, Alessandro De Marchi, Ion Marin and Pinchas Steinberg, as well as Péter Eötvös, who will conduct his own opera.
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.

Hungarian State Opera
Andrássy út 22
H-1061 Budapest
Tel: +36 1 81 47 438
www.opera.hu