Opera – 19th–20th centuries
The first and second productions promise to be a genuine revelation for the Budapest audience, as the Palace of Arts maintains its bold tradition of filling gaps in the repertoire by programming two rare works from Richard Strauss. The comic opera The Silent Woman has been enjoyed by a local audience just once so far, courtesy of a guest performance by the Dresden Semperoper in 1977, while the Capriccio may be remembered here only from our Met screenings. For the remaining two evenings, two works that fall very far apart in terms of both period and style will demonstrate the diversity and unquenchable vitality of the genre. First off, marking the bicentennial of the composer’s birth in 2013, will be Verdi’s passionately patriotic opera Attila, which premièred in 1846. Its antithesis follows in the shape of György Ligeti’s Le grand macabre, an “anti-opera” first performed in Stockholm in 1978, which extends its tongue at the traditions of Western classical music and opera.