Játék a kastélyban

There are evenings when our Opera House cannot perform because rehearsals are ongoing on stage until the evening. There are audience members who can only afford to hear their favourite pieces with a discount. And there are works that, although very popular, cannot be staged every season due to the congestion of productions.

The German bass began his career at the opera houses of Berlin. However, when Sir Georg Solti cast him in the role of Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, René Pape’s international career almost immediately continued on the stages of the world’s greatest houses including the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Vienna State Opera, Bayreuth, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

A century ago, the world first encountered this remarkable opus, a work that soon became one of the cornerstones of twentieth-century musical innovation. Premiered in 1926, the singspiel is a milestone in Hungarian music history: its composer, Zoltán Kodály, fulfilled his aspiration to elevate Hungarian folk song of ancient origin to the same status as classical music, by virtue of its equivalent values, placing it on the stage of the nation’s Opera House.