The exciting U.S. debut of the Hungarian State Opera continued strongly with their second and third New York appearances on the evenings of Thursday, November 1st, with a double-bill of János Vajda’s intriguing contemporary work, Mario and the Magician—adapted from the famous, eponymous novella by Thomas Mann and premiered in 1988—and Béla Bartók’s powerful, mysterious Bluebeard’s Castle, conceived here by director and set designer Péter Galambos as a diptych, and on the following night with Karl Goldmark’s magnificent, now seldom seen The Queen of Sheba. (Two nights previously, the company premiered their production of the great 19th-century Hungarian opera, Bánk Bán, which proved to be an extraordinary musical experience.)

 

With the first program, in both cases, the director modernized the settings—although to no obvious advantage—and in neither instance were the stagings visually effective or conceptually persuasive but the strength of the music alone—exceptionally performed by the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra and superbly conducted by Balázs Kocsár—sufficed to provide aesthetic satisfactions. I am not fully competent to judge a work composed in the advanced modernist idiom of Mario and the Magician but I nonetheless found it engaging, partly for its impressive orchestral writing. At least two of the singers were especially remarkable, András Palerdi in the lead role of Cipolla, the magician, and Orsolya Hajnalka Rőser as Signora Angiolieri.

 

More astonishing was the Bartók masterwork, one of the finest 20th-century operas, with a libretto by the important film theorist Béla Balázs, after the fairytale by Charles Perrault. Here, too, there was some marvelous singing from Palerdi in the title role of Bluebeard and, even more unforgettably, from Ildikó Komlósi as Judith.

 

The staging of The Queen of Sheba—an opera that deserves to return to the mainstream repertory—however, was much more satisfying, directed austerely but elegantly by Csaba Káel, with beautiful—if underexploited—Art Nouveau sets designed by Éva Szendrényi, attractive costumes by Anikó Németh, and inventive choreography by Marianna Venekei, executed by dancers from the Hungarian National Ballet. Musically, the presentation could scarcely have been bettered, with magisterial direction of the orchestra by János Kovács and thrilling assistance from the chorus.

 

The singers were first-rate with a mesmerizing performance by the sexy Erika Gál in the title role. Also wonderful were Boldizsár László as Assad, Eszter Sümegi as Sulamith, Zoltán Kelemen as King Solomon, Péter Fried as the High Priest, Eszter Zavaros as Astaroth, Lajos Geiger as Baal-Hanan, and Ferenc Cserhalmi as the Temple Watchman. The artists received an enthusiastic ovation. I hope this superior production will gain wider exposure.