Archive – 2014
Review of the operas performed at the Opera Composition Competition. This year the Competition of the Miskolc Opera Festival was held for the second time. The jury have chosen three operas out of the works submitted during the year, which were presented to the audience on the 17th of June. The operas were performed with a piano accompaniment, in the style of the ’Reading theatre’. However, certain parts of these works will be presented with an orchestra on the last evening of the Festival, at the Gala. The jury will make the final decision after listening to the pieces on both occasions. At the Gala the audience can vote, too, and only after that will the winner opera of this year’s competition be announced. That work will be performed in full at the Bartók + Opera Festival in 2015.
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’Indaco’ (’Indigo’) is the title of contemporary Italian composer Girolamo Deraco’s CD album released in April, 2014. The piece was written for an instrumental ensemble. This musical material was performed now by the Italian trio Etymos Ensemble, with the composer himself giving short introductions before every movement.
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Review of György Selmeczi’s opera Byzantium. The Programme of the Miskolc Opera Festival anticipated the birth of a new national opera in connection with this opera premiere. Of course, national operas are not (or rather, were not) born this way; time and the audience decide about it. However, it is a fact, that a historical topic and certain other features – for example, pathetic style or monumentality – are usually the properties of national operas, just like in the case of György Selmeczi’s opera presented now. The libretto was written by the composer himself and poet Zsuzsa Kapecz. It is based on Ferenc Herczeg’ still popular play Byzantium published in 1904.
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Review of the Bartók-evening on the opening day of the Opera Festival. Until this year Bluebeard’s castle has always been billed at the ’Bartók + Opera Festival’. However, this year the tradition is not continuing, and Bartók’s only opera is not going to be performed. Conductor Gergely Kesselyák, the director of the Festival said the following about it earlier: ’it is good to have a year of rest now’. True, that during the years Bluebeard’s castle has already been performed here in several different productions with many different casts. Instead of another version now the focus is on Bartók’s orchestral works. In the Opening concert we listened to three works from Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3 and two other, rarely performed pieces: Kossuth Symphony and the I. Orchestral suite.
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