Gergely Kesselyák festivaldirector and the winner, Szabolcs MátyássyThe winner of the Key to the Future 2016 Opera Composition Competition is the opera entitled Scaevola by the composer Szabolcs Mátyássy. The work will be produced next year by Bartók Plus Opera Festival, as Gergely Kesselyák, festival director announced after the Finals organized at the Solti Hall of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music on December 13th, 2016., festival director announced after the Finals organized at the Solti Hall of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music on December 13th, 2016.
In the Finals of the opera composition competition of Bartók Plus Opera Festival the audience were able to hear characteristic excerpts from four new operas.
Jan Jirásek’s R.U.R. – Rossum's Universal Robots (libretto by Jan Schmid based on the play by Karel Čapek), Miklós Szilágyi and György Tibor Horváth’s La Prima Donna, Péter Lendvai’s: Tarot tale (libretto by Tünde Kardos) and Szabolcs Mátyássy’s Scaevola (libretto by László Jánik) were performed by students of the Solo Singing Department at Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music directed by András Almási-Tóth. The visual design was created by Tamás Rákai and Zita Safranek. The evening performance was contributed to by the Á la cARTe choir and Szabolcs Sándor provided piano accompaniment.
Jury of the Opera Composition Competition
The works performed were evaluated by an international jury consisting of Gergely Kesselyák, art director of Bartók Plus Opera Festival; Gyula Fekete, composer, deputy rector of Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music; Alexey Rybnikov, composer from Russia; Girolamo Deraco composer from Italy, Bubo Damen producer, Philip de la Croix, director of Musica Prima by Classic 360 and Bruno Berger-Gorski, opera director from Germany, who announced Szabolcs Mátyássy’s work, Scaevola to be the winner of the competition.
This will be the first opera in the history of the opera composition competition of Bartók Plus Opera Festival that will be performed in a fully staged version with orchestra at the next festival in Miskolc from June 16th to June 25th, 1017.
Szabolcs Mátyássy composer:
Szabolcs Mátyássy
(...) It was extremely inspiring for me that the announcement insisted on so-called “popular operas” being submitted for the competition. I deem it awfully important to make the audience realise that contemporary music is not inevitably synonymous with difficult to comprehend, difficult to decode, serial or dodecaphonic music, but it can also mean something easier to take in. This, obviously does not mean that the composer is jotting down exercises in style made easy. The soloist parts of my opera are largely characterized by tonal music and are made up of closed pieces; arias, duets and tercets. I also preserved the tradition that storytelling is mainly recitative-like while in the arias the emphasis is on emotions. I hope to have created tunes that can be recalled, that you can even hum to yourself whilst walking in the street. (...)
