Reviews – 2015
Review of Poulenc’s The human voice and Girolamo Deraco's opera Facebooking. On the last day of the Miskolc Opera Festival 2015 we could watch these works performed together. The performance of Facebooking was the premiere of this work.
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Review of Verdi's Il trovatore. The performance at the Ice Hall of Miskolc was part of the series of the Miskolc Opera Festival called ’Opera for thousands’. The name does not only refer to the popularity of the works performed, but also to the fact, that within this nice initiative there is one free performance every year. Needless to say, that because of this, and thanks to Verdi’s opera, of course, on the evening of June 19 the huge auditorium of the Ice Hall was full.
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Review of Puccini's Turandot. According to the new concept of the Miskolc Opera Festival, framed two years ago, they would like to perform so-called ’popular operas’, that is melodic, theatrical music works, that can easily be received by a wider audience, too, but written with the highest aesthetic aspirations of classical music. Within that they mean ’modern’ works, by which definition they more or less mean the era after Béla Bartók (or, as we talk about an opera festival, the first performance of Bluebeard’s castle), until today. I am not sure that based on the above, Puccini’s name immediatley comes to one’s mind, but his last work, Turandot was premiered two years after the Italian composer’s death, in 1926, eight years after the first performance of Bluebeard’s castle. As for the statement that Puccini’s operas satisfy the conditions mentioned - ’the highest aesthetic aspirations’ and ’popularity’ -, it needs no further proof.
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Review of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s castle. It is a tradition at the Miskolc Opera Festival that Béla Bartók’s only opera is performed every year, always in a different stage-direction. Last year’s festival was an exception, but this year the work was presented again. The most significant Hungarian opera was now performed by the Hungarian Opera, Cluj, and directed by Miklós Szinetár, who was also the director of the film version of the opera in 1981, and the stage-director of the performance at the Hungarian State Opera House in 2006. (In the second half of the evening The wooden prince was presented, too, which is not discussed in this article.)
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