From Mozart's youthful compositions to the grandeur of Handel and the intricate beauty of Schönberg, the Hungarian State Opera's 2024-2025 season promises a magnificent tapestry of musical and theatrical artistry. With performances spanning from operatic masterpieces like 'Bastien und Bastienne' to the symphonic splendor of 'Der Messias (Messiah),' this season is set to enchant audiences with a rich diversity of genres and celebrated performers. Experience an exceptional journey through the operatic and orchestral landscape, with each event offering its own unique charm and cultural significance.

A Symphony of Culture: The Hungarian State Opera's Captivating 2024-2025 Season

The Hungarian State Opera's upcoming season is set to be a cultural feast with an eclectic mix of operas, plays, and concerts. Featuring classics like Mozart's 'Bastien und Bastienne,' Menotti's 'The Telephone,' Verdi's 'Macbeth,' and a tribute to iconic soprano Ilona Tokody, the season promises to be a rich tapestry of musical and theatrical excellence. Notable performers and creative minds will bring these works to life, ensuring unforgettable experiences for audiences in Budapest and beyond.

Hungarian State Opera's Diverse Line-Up: A Celebration of Artistic Excellence

Budapest is set to become a haven for opera lovers and cultural enthusiasts as the Hungarian State Opera rolls out an impressive array of events in early 2025. From the classical elegance of 'Golden Age: English Elegance' to the hauntingly beautiful 'Macbeth,' audiences will experience the talents of world-renowned performers and innovative directors. With a diverse program that spans the works of Verdi to the architectural genius of Miklós Ybl, this season promises to both honor tradition and embrace new artistic expressions.

Celebrating the Arts: Hungary's Feast of Opera and Elegance in 2025

The Hungarian State Opera's 2025 season promises a dynamic assembly of operatic spectacles, drawing connoisseurs and novices alike into a world of theatrical brilliance. With a line-up that includes Giuseppe Verdi’s 'Macbeth', Wagnerian heroines led by soprano Eszter Sümegi, and the romantic tragedy 'Madama Butterfly', attendees can expect a journey through diverse narratives and historic compositions. From architect Miklós Ybl's homage to the rich history of opera to the thrilling performances by Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov, this season offers an abundance of cultural riches and musical prowess.

Hungarian State Opera's 2025 Season: A Showcase of Timeless Operatic Marvels

The Hungarian State Opera's 2025 season promises to be an unforgettable journey through the worlds of opera, ballet, and music. From the grand 'Opera Crown' gala featuring Georgian and Hungarian artists, to the dramatic retelling of Puccini's 'Madama Butterfly', and the enchanting ballet 'La Bayadère', the season showcases a diverse array of performances. Notable artists like Erika Miklósa and Joyce DiDonato will grace the stage, delivering captivating performances that pay homage to the timeless beauty of classical art forms.

A Symphony of Art and Culture: Celebrating the Hungarian State Opera's 2025 Season

Prepare to be immersed in the world of opera and ballet as the Hungarian State Opera gears up for an exciting season. From the heart-wrenching tragedy of 'Madama Butterfly' to the historical intrigue of 'Maria Stuarda', and the classical ballet grace of 'La Bayadère', the series of events promises a rich tapestry of storytelling and artistic mastery. Join renowned performers like Erika Miklósa and Joyce DiDonato, as well as dynamic productions such as 'Golden Age: American Beauty', ensuring a memorable experience for all attendees.

A Cultural Panorama: Highlights of the Hungarian State Opera's Upcoming Season

MariusPetipa’schoreography takes the audience to legendary India to witness a love story between a temple dancer and a noble warrior. La Bayadère is an excellentexample of the classical ballet tradition, but the new Hungarian National Balett production will prove to be a real treat. The records of the original 1877 choreography are incomplete, the fourth act of the ballet is lost. AlbertMirzoyan attempts to reconstruct the missing parts to complete Petipa’schoreography of La Bayadère on stage of the Opera House.

La Bayadère

Hungarian State Opera

Joyce Didonato

In 1991, the calm waters of Budapest’s opera scene were suddenly stirred by a young girl, not even twenty, from Kiskunhalas. During an audition, she dazzled with the famous aria of the Queen of the Night, and Endre Ütő immediately signed the girl who hadn’t yet graduated from the Academy of Music. Erika Miklósa made her debut as Papagena, with a background in sports, a radiant physique, a fresh voice, as well as such a natural zest for life and bursting energy that had long been missing from the OPERA. The coloratura soprano lead roles quickly followed, while the young artist honed her skills under Júlia Hamari. She sang the role of the Queen of the Night for the first time in 1995 at the Erkel Theatre, the role that would become her global trademark. She performed Mozart’s heroine on all significant stages around the world more than three hundred times. Social responsibility is of utmost importance to Erika Miklósa, and since 2014, she has been the chair of the jury for Virtuosos.

Erika Miklósa

Eiffel Art Studios

Golden Age: American Beauty

Georg Zeppenfeld

Maria Stuarda

The tale of Cio-Cio san and Pinkerton stands out as one of the finest romantic tragedies ever written. Convinced that her 'temporary marriage' is not only legally binding, but also founded on reciprocated feelings, 'Madama' Butterfly loses every last shred of hope, until death offers the only possible escape. 'Had it not been set in an exotic locale far from here,' went the commentary on the play that inspired the libretto, 'the suffering would be unbearable.' For opera lovers, Puccini's wonderful music elevates tragedy to the heights of catharsis.

Madama Butterfly

Easter With Mascagni

Opera gala with Georgian and Hungarian artists with Hungarian and English surtitles

Opera Crown

Anna Netrebko & Yusif Eyvazov's Aria Recital

In 2014, we celebrated the bicentenary of the birth of a great admirer of Italian Renaissance, the legendary Hungarian architect Miklós Ybl, who left behind not only his masterpiece, the Opera House but also such timeless works as the Castle Bazaar, St. Stephen’s Basilica and the Danubius Fountain on Erzsébet Square. The concert was attended by an audience of engineers and architects, and we have been trying to make the Ybl Concert a celebration of the architectural profession ever since. When compiling the programme for the concert, we try to select from masterpieces of Ybl’s contemporaries and often acquaintances. Before the concert, representatives of both the OPERA and the Ybl Society lay a wreath at the memorial tablet on the side wall of the Neo-Renaissance Opera House, accompanied by Italian Renaissance tower music, which was not possible for years due to the historical reconstruction of the building. However, 2022 saw the restoration of this beautiful tradition.

Golden Age: Ybl211

The year 1993 was a fortunate one for Eszter Sümegi. It was then that she received her diploma from the Academy of Music, graduated with the role of Tosca, won first prize at the Pavarotti Singing Competition in Philadelphia, and made her debut at the OPERA. She immediately took on a lead role, introducing herself to the Budapest audience as Mimì in the refreshed version of La bohème staged by Sándor Palcsó Jr. This first leading role was followed by many others in Hungary, with Sümegi quickly becoming the theatre’s lead soprano right before our eyes. Her repertoire consists exclusively of lead roles. After mastering Italian heroines, she gradually moved on to Wagner’s characters, and perhaps the crown jewels of her career are the delicate female roles of Richard Strauss. Naturally, Eszter Sümegi’s name is also well-known abroad. She has performed in several major cities from Vienna to Paris to Toronto and, as Sulamith in Die Königin von Saba. She even brought the good repute of the forgotten Hungarian opera as well as her own noble artistry to New York and Tel Aviv.

Eszter Sümegi

Macbeth hears a prophecy from three strange witch-like figures that he will become king of Scotland. The news triggers a series of brutal thoughts and actions in him and even more so in his wife, Lady Macbeth. It was not by chance that Verdi chose this Shakespeare text as the basis of his opera: the title character goes through the hell of spiritual depth, doubts and ruthlessness, unearthly forces, dramatic murders, and psychic turmoil again and again. Situation and motifs that yearn for an opera stage and unfold to music. The production is staged by Matthew Wild, who is widely recognized as a leading musical theatre director of his generation in South Africa, and he is now an increasingly sought-after artist on European stages as well. His productions are praised for their intelligence, visual prowess, and musicality. The clash of (English and ancient African) cultures and their influence on each other also play an important role in his Macbeth performance, just as the earthly and mystical-transcendental worlds intertwine as sharp contrasts in the opera.

Macbeth

Vittorio Grigolo

Gurre-lieder

Erkel Theater

Andrea Rost

Golden Age: English Elegance

In 1972, a previously unknown student of the Music Academy won the Kodály Singing Competition: it was then that Ilona Tokody’s name became a household term. Her path led directly to the Opera House, where she celebrated her first major success in the summer of 1977 as Liù in Turandot. Her career was founded by such masters as András Mikó and Lamberto Gardelli. Ilona Tokody’s talent could not remain hidden from the world, either. The first stop in her international career was the Vienna State Opera, and from the early 1980s, there was hardly a significant opera house where she hadn’t performed. She might be the only soprano who had the chance to be a Mimì opposite all Three Tenors. The majority of her repertoire consists of heroines from operas by Puccini and Verdi. She always loyally returned to her country, her hometown of Szeged, and the Opera House. A book about Tokody, penned by Zsuzsanna Réfi was published in 2017 by the OPERA. In honour of her 70th birthday in 2023, a compilation of her recordings was released.

Ilona Tokody

New Year's greeting by Prof. Dr. Norbert Wikonkál, Director General of the Honvéd Hospital

New Year's at the Opera House

Proclaiming (notably with the popular “Hallelujah” chorus) the coming and resurrection of the Saviour, Messiah remains to this day one of the most popular of Handel’s works. A little under half a century after its 1742 world premiere in Dublin, it was performed for the first time in the revised and rescored German-language version Der Messias created by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The “German Messiah” thus is the fruit of an extraordinary “collaboration” between two geniuses: the scintillating brilliance of Händel as interpreted by Mozart.

DER MESSIAS (MESSIAH) – concert

How Big Is the Palm of God's Hand?

HUNGARIAN CHRISTMAS – MVM Piccolo Programme

Return Victorious!

"There is only one way to end your career more splendidly than with Otello, and that is to end it with Falstaff!" So Verdi was told by his librettist and good friend, Arrigo Boito. Although the elderly master had not tried his hand at comedy since the ugly failure of Un giorno di regno in 1840, fifty years later the dry spell ended: Sir John Falstaff, the fat and rakish knight invented by the composer's favourite author, Shakespeare, would become his second comic opera, as well as his final – and perhaps most brilliant – work. This comedy conceived by world-renowned director Arnaud Bernard will be returning to the stage of the Opera House with a parade of stars for a cast!

Falstaff

Matthew Polenzani

The Chinese princess Turandot swears that she will not marry any man – except for the one who can solve her three-question riddle. Giacomo Puccini's final, unfinished opera tackles fairy-tale and socio-philosophical questions at the same time. The OPERA’s new production is staged by acclaimed choreographer Dóra Barta – a woman interpreting the most mysterious female title role in the world opera. Her staging approaches the work through the exciting stage language of movement and physical theatre as well as from the perspective of commedia dell'arte, from which Carlo Gozzi also drew inspiration at the time for his play on which the opera is based on. The abstract nature of the language of dance and movement helps to bring the philosophical content of the work into focus, while the aspect of power also remains important, because Turandot’s father, the emperor is not only looking for a husband for her daughter, but also for the future ruler for China…

Turandot

In recent years, even decades, it has become a common practice to completely or partially stage certain oratorical works. After Messiah and Matthäus-Passion, nothing could be more suitable to continue the practice than Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem, which is claimed by many, half-seriously, but certainly aptly, to be their "favourite opera". Even though it is a funeral mass, which traditionally does not require a stage – in fact, it specifically keeps it away from itself – its drama, emotionality, and the extremity of mood nuances almost naturally demand a spectacle. It must not be forgotten that in Verdi's these works were not composed for today’s neutral concert halls, church works were placed in sacred spaces, where they could interact with the environment. Even in a traditional concert form, a performance at an opera house gives the work a new visual appearance, but if the performance creates the possibility of a more organic theatrical experience, it can also become more capable of articulating the main message of a very human fear of death more tangibly according to the director's interpretation. The performance with special visuals is created by Ádám Tulassay and his creative team.

Requiem

Anyone who knows or at least heard Mihály Kálmándy sing knows that concentration, recognition of the best moment, and a sense of rhythm are among the most important virtues of this excellent baritone. He started playing the piano at the age of six, later he played the classical guitar and tried his hand at other instruments, all the while listening to operas on the radio and then conducting them while standing in front of the set. In 1985, he graduated from the Gheorghe Dima College of Music in Cluj-Napoca with a diploma in singing. It was here that he sang the role of Nabucco for the first time, which accompanied him throughout his entire career, and even started his international career with it in Trieste. His success brought him numerous invitations worldwide, he performed in Rome, Naples, Vienna, Stockholm, London, Warsaw, but he was also applauded in Seoul and New Zealand, while he continued to sing the major baritone roles at the Hungarian State Opera. Since his debut in 1988, he has grown into one of the most important members of the company, performing more than 600 times in front of the Budapest audience. In the 2024/25 season, the Kossuth Award recipient artist joins the heroines of the series that started in the previous season, so those interested can get to know him more closely as well.

Mihály Kálmándy

Tosca 

National Theatre of Szeged

The Uruguayan star made his debut on an opera stage in his hometown of Montevido at the age of 22, in Andrea Chénier. The young bass-baritone had won the first prize at several singing competitions, but in 1998, when he became the grand prize winner of Placido Domingo’s Operalia, his internation career was launched. Since then, Erwin Schrott is a household name in the operatic life, and his performances are considered a true celebration in almost all the major theatres and concert halls around the world. The backbone of his repertoire consists mainly of the romantic repertoire the big baritone roles of Mozart. With his portrayals of Don Giovanni, Figaro, and Leporello, he became a real benchmark for Mozart interpretations. He has been a recurring guest on the stages of the Hungarian State Opera House for a decade now, in his most iconic roles. One of his most outstanding performances in Budapest was the 2020 Figaro series, in which the audience of the Erkel Theatre could see him twice in both main (bass)baritone roles, but his portrayal of Mefistofele in the refurbished Opera House was also memorable. In addition to opera, the charming South American artist is a dedicated interpreter of Latin American music, including tango, and his fans were able to get to know this side of him at his 2018 concert on the Margaret Island. After the grandiose opera productions, he returns to OPERA in the third season of Stars’ Recitals with Piano to showcase his versatile talent

Erwin Schrott

The young György Solti, later to be known internationally as Sir Georg Solti, was contracted by the Hungarian Royal Opera in 1938. However, due to the dark clouds gathering, he could only conduct one single performance. Later, in 1948, he applied for a position once more, but following a couple of instances, he felt the foreboding of the new dictatorship and moved to London. During his long life, the renowned conductor took numerous talents under his wings, and one of his important legacies is the summer academy founded in 2004, where his former students and followers mentor those who wish to soar to this very day. In the past two decades of its existence, the academy trained nearly 300 singers and 100 répétiteurs with the participation of such international personalities as Kiri Te Kanawa, Leo Nucci, and José Carreras.

Solti Gala With Stars, Co-produced With The Georg Solti Accademia

“Nixon in China is John Adams' most successful opera to date and, from the point of view of contemporary American music as a whole, one of the most celebrated operas. In his documentary work, Adams solves the dispassion of news reports with the tools of music, and although the work is about the US president's five-day visit to China, the music is not a conveyor of a political message. The tragicomic power of Adams' music largely stems from the contrast between the two worlds and customs,” writes Zoltán Csehy in his opera guide. Nixon in China has become a globally popular opera performed more frequently in recent times due to the exciting theme of the meeting of the American and Chinese cultures. Therefore, its Hungarian premiere is also timely. Presented in the OPERA’s Anglophone Season, artistic director András Almási-Tóth used the special spaces of the Eiffel Art Studios with exciting imagination.

Nixon In China

Thanks to the spectacular development of our Orchestra and Chorus, since 2020 we have been able to perform Mahler’s enormous creation at the beginning of each season as a sort of preparation. Each year, it is directed by a different conductor. The work was last performed in Hungary 13 years before our grand undertaking: Hungary was first able to perform it in 1983 (!) and it has been played on two occasions since by the ad hoc companies of various artistic institutions. There is hardly a more appropriate piece for launching our Opera Total orchestra series than this powerful symphony, which will involve almost every single one of our musicians, who in themselves could make up a number of orchestras

Symphony No. 8

Opera140

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was barely 12 years old when he composed his bucolic little opera, Bastien et Bastienne, which was performed at an “alternative location”, in the garden of a certain Doctor Mesmer whose studies of magnetism are referred to with such comical effect towards the end of Mozart's career as an opera composer, namely, in Così fan tutte. According to the sources, the young Wolfgang wrote Colas's wizard aria in gibberish himself (“Diggi, daggi, schurri, murri...”), and in the overture we can discover a real curiosity: the main theme is practically the same main theme in the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica composed much later…

Hungarian State Opera House

14 - 27 Jun, 2025

La Bayadère

May 28, 2025

Joyce Didonato

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Hungarian State Opera House