Cast, creatives

Internationally-acclaimed Greek baritone Aris Argiris is one of today’s leading singers on both the opera and concert stages. He has worked with conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Christian Thielemann, Donato Renzetti, Manfred Honeck, Patrick Lange and Carlo Rizzi and appeared at the Arena di Verona, in Saint Petersburg, at the Opéra de Montréal, Semperoper Dresden, Vlaamse Opera, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Theater an der Wien, the Scottish Opera, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and at Staatsoper Hamburg, Teatro San Carlo di Napoli, San Diego Opera, NNT Tokyo, Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper and Komische Oper Berlin, and the Savonlinna Opera Festival. His repertoire includes Wotan, Scarpia, Rigoletto, Amonasro, Renato, Jochanaan, G. Germont, Nabucco, Iago and the Four Villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann.

Dr. Christian Baier currently serves as the head dramaturg of Ballet Dortmund. The former chief editor of a music journal, he has worked as a dramaturg for several music theatres and festivals and on international productions. For ten years, between 1996 and 2006, Baier directed Austria’s first German-language theatre company composed exclusively of immigrants. Between 2012 and 2016, he was the artistic director of the International Gluck Opera Festival. As a music theatre dramaturg, he has initiated the world premières of numerous contemporary works and contributed to the rediscovery of forgotten classic operas. The internationally renowned dance pieces he has staged at Ballet Dortmund have helped to revive classical ballet in Germany.

Andrea Brassói-Jőrös pursued her vocal studies with Éva Mohos Nagy in Debrecen and at the Liszt Academy under the guidance of Júlia Pászthy, earning her degree in opera voice in András Almási-Tóth’s course there in 2016. She has collaborated with such artists as György Kurtág, Péter Eötvös, Gergely Vajda, András Keller, Zoltán Jeney, Gábor Csalog, Christian Schumann and Alan Buribaiev. Contemporary works comprise a significant part of her repertoire, especially the compositions of György Kurtág. After making her Hungarian State Opera debut as Jade Boucher in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, she went on to sing Titania in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. This season she portrayed Natasha Rostova in Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace.

Gábor Bretz was born in Budapest. He began his studies in Los Angeles, then continued them in Budapest, winning the grand prize at the Maria Callas Competition in Athens in 2005. He performs regularly at the Hungarian State Opera, where he sings the most important bass and bass-baritone roles. He has debuted at many opera houses abroad as well, including New York’s Metropolitan Opera and London’s Covent Garden, along with theatres in Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, Brussels, Amsterdam, Palermo, Naples, Bologna, Hamburg, Aix-en-Provence, Tokyo and Sydney. He frequently sings the title role in Bluebeard’s Castle in concert and staged performances, and has taught at the Liszt Academy and the King Saint Stephen Music High School since 2018.

Corinna Crome studied costume and stage design at Salzburg’s Mozarteum before working as an assistant at the Bavarian State Theatre. She subsequently collaborated with Wilfried Minks, Philip Tiedemann and Michael Simon, among others. At the Bavarian State Theatre she designed the sets for a performance of The Shadow Line and was also the set and costume designer for Der gute Gott von Manhattan (again in Bavaria) and Amphitryon at the Hamburg Altona Theatre. She has accepted invitations to work at Toronto’s Opera House and Drama Theatre and at the Hungarian State Opera, as well as in Innsbruck, Lübeck and Dresden, at the Royal Swedish Opera (Andrea Chénier), Oper Bonn (Manon Lescaut) and Prague’s National Theatre (Orfeo ed Euridice).

Albert Dohmen began his international career in 1997 with a performance of Wozzeck in which he sang alongside the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Claudio Abbado. Since then he has established himself as one of the leading Wagner singers of his generation, lately focusing on bass roles such as Landgraf, Hunding, Hagen or Marke. He is regularly invited as a guest to the world’s greatest opera houses and has performed in Bayreuth and at the Met, the Wiener Staatsoper and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. His recorded output includes a Ring cycle produced with Christian Thielemann, Die Frau ohne Schatten with Georg Solti and an Ariadne auf Naxos with Giuseppe Sinopoli – winning a collective two Grammy Awards and a Gramophone Award.

Ádám Fischer is the creative force behind the Budapest Wagner Days and its permanent conductor. After studying composition in Budapest, he learned conducting in Vienna. He has taken the podium at the world’s leading opera houses and conducted the top symphony orchestras. He recorded all 104 of the Haydn’s symphonies. Of his records, those of Goldmark’s Die Königin von Saba and of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle won major awards. He has also conducted the Ring at the Wiener Staatsoper to great acclaim – the prestigious institution elected him an honorary member in 2017. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 2001, and was named “Conductor of the Year” by the German periodical Opernwelt for his work at the festival. He is a winner of the Kossuth Prize.

Beatrix Fodor graduated from Budapest’s Liszt Academy, where she studied under Júlia Pászthy, and continued her studies in Graz and Vienna. In 2002, she placed second at the Salzburg Mozarteum’s 8th International Mozart Competition and first at the Prague–Vienna–Budapest Summer Academy Competition. In addition to her many concert performances, she primarily sings roles from Mozart’s operas, enjoying great success as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and, later on, in roles in Le nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte, and has also appeared in Richard Strauss’s Elektra.

Gabriella Fodor graduated from the Liszt Academy with a degree in solo voice and opera. She made her debut at the Hungarian State Opera in 2004 as Miss Jessel in the Hungarian première of Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw. Since then, she has sung the roles of Pamina, the Countess, Donna Elvira, Michaëla, Desdemona, Mimì, and both Margherita and Elena (in Boito’s Mefistofele), among others. She also regularly takes the stage at both Hungarian and international festivals as a concert singer, and has taken part in performances of the Ninth Symphony, the St Matthew Passion, Peer Gynt, and the requiems of Mozart and Frigyes Hidas. She has been a regular presence at the Budapest Wagner Days series since 2008.

Christian Franz debuted as Max (Der Freischütz) at Sächsisches Landestheater Radebeul. Since then he performs works of Wagner, Schubert, Strauss, Mahler, Schönberg, Henze, Janáček, Verdi, Leoncavallo and Britten. Production venues include the Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich state operas, the Bayreuth Festival, the Metropolitan Opera, New National Theatre Tokyo, Biwako Hall, Canadian Opera Toronto, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Salle Pleyel, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. A regular fixture at the Budapest Wagner Days he sang the title role of Parsifal, all tenor parts in the Ring, and also winning great acclaim as Tristan.

Erika Gál is a member of the Hungarian State Opera and a winner of the Komlóssy award. In 2002, she made her debut at the Erkel Theatre as Lola in Cavalleria rusticana, and in that same year the Wagner Society awarded her a scholarship to train in Bayreuth. A recurring guest at the Miskolc International Opera Festival, she also sang the title role in Carmen at the Bucharest Opera Festival and has performed as a guest in Finland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Japan and Thailand. She regularly performs at the Budapest Wagner Days in the roles of Flosshilde, Erda and the First Norn.

As one of the most sought-after singers of his fach, celebrated by audience and the media alike, Austrian bass Günther Groissböck visits the leading opera houses and festivals around the world, appearing in such roles as Baron Ochs (Der Rosenkavalier), Gurnemanz (Parsifal), Heinrich (Lohengrin), Philip II (Don Carlo), Kaspar (Der Freischütz) and Boris Izmailov (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk). Together with Malcolm Martineau, he recorded his latest album Nicht Wiedersehen! with songs by Strauss, Mahler and Hans Rott. This summer he will guest at the Oper Klosterneuburg Festival in Vienna as stage director for a new production of Verdi’s Don Carlo, in which he will also sing the role of Philip II.

Zsolt Haja started his voice studies at age 18 under Éva Mohos Nagy, who remains his coach today. He launched his career by winning the József Simándy Singing Competition and the Ferruccio Tagliavini International Singing Competition, also taking a special prize at the Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna. After making his debut at Debrecen’s Csokonai Theatre in 2005, he took the stage of the Hungarian State Opera for the first time in 2008, in King Pomádé’s New Clothes. He later took on the roles of Escamillo, Guglielmo, Papageno, Figaro and Marcello there, and was named a Chamber Singer of the Hungarian State Opera in the 2019/20 season. He has performed at Müpa Budapest in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio and Péter Eötvös’s Atlantis.

Magdalena Anna Hofmann was born in Warsaw and studied lied and oratorio, as well as opera, at the Vienna Conservatory. Engagements have taken her to sing at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (Lulu), to the Opéra National de Bordeaux (Le Balcon), to Bonn, Essen and Copenhagen as Senta in Der fliegende Holländer, to Lyon as both Senta and Carlotta in Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, several times to the Bregenz Festival, as the First Lady in The Magic Flute, the Cook in Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol and Portia in André Tchaikovsky’s The Merchant of Venice, and to the Vienna and Berlin festivals as Kundry in Bernhard Lang’s Mondparsifal. She has also appeared as Leonore (Fidelio) at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, as the Foreign Princess in Rusalka at the Dresden Semperoper and as Isolde at the Hannover State Opera and the Hessian State Theatre Wiesbaden.

Lilla Horti is a Junior Prima Award- and Cziffra Award-winning artist, a returning guest at the Budapest Wagner Days. The soloist of the Hungarian State Opera pursued her studies in Hungary and Spain, earning her degree at Budapest’s Liszt Academy in 2017 as student of Éva Marton. She is active on the opera stage since 2013, in 2017 she started taking on principal roles at the Hungarian State Opera. She sang among others Fiordiligi, Madame Silberklang, First Dama, Nedda, Mimì, Antonia and Giulietta from The Tales of Hoffmann, Micaëla, Rosalinda, Szaffi, Bess, and Wagner roles as First Blumenmadchen, Wellgunde, Freia and Gutrune. She is also a busy concert singer, with numerous song recitals, gala events and oratorio performances to her name. She sung in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Serbia and India as well.

Péter Kálmán has already portrayed Alberich several times at the Budapest Wagner Days. His most notable appearances abroad include a turn as Mustafà alongside Cecilia Bartoli in a Salzburg production of L’italiana in Algeri and another as Bartolo in Laurent Pelly’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Last year at La Monnaie, in Brussels, he sang Gianni Schicchi and Michele in Puccini’s Triptych, and at the Hungarian State Opera he made his role debuts as Scarpia in Tosca and the four villains in Les contes d’Hoffmann and, most recently, as Klingsor in Parsifal.

Zsófia Kálnay won the József Simándy Singing Competition as a student of Mária Temesi at the Music Faculty of the University of Szeged. Shortly afterwards, she joined the Szeged National Theatre as a soloist. As the winner of the special prize at the singing competition, she performed in Richard Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau conducted by Zoltán Kocsis at Müpa, and has since received several prestigious invitations to sing oratorios and opera pieces. She is a recurring guest at various Hungarian opera companies, enjoying great success with her portrayals of Cenerentola, Rosina and Cherubino. She has previously performed the roles of Flosshilde and Rossweise at the Budapest Wagner Days. She has been a soloist with the Hungarian State Opera since 2014.

Bass Lukasz Konieczny was born in the Polish city of Łódź and studied voice at the Music Academy in Wrocław. He is a former member of the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. His repertoire includes Bartolo, Masetto, the Commendatore, Sarastro, Zuniga, Banco, Fafner, Hunding and Truffaldin, among other roles. Guest appearances have taken him to the Handel Festival in Halle as Polifemo in Acis and Galatea, to the Mainfranken Theater in Würzburg as Rocco, to the Hamburg State Opera as Sparafucile and to the Munich Opera Festival as Douphol. At the Dresden Semperoper, he has appeared as Crespel/Luther in Les contes d’Hoffmann and Lodovico in Otello, and he has sung the role of the King in Aida at the Dubai Opera with the company of the National Opera Warsaw. He recently returned to the Bavarian State Opera as Reinmar von Zweter in Tannhäuser and to the National Opera Warsaw as Sparafucile.

János Kovács earned his degree in conducting from the Liszt Academy in 1973. In the decades since, he has worked at the Hungarian State Opera as a répétiteur, conductor, chief conductor, first conductor and principal music director. Between 1979 and 1981, he served as a musical assistant at the Bayreuth Festival. He has taken the podium before leading Hungarian symphony orchestras all over the world and created numerous recordings with world-renowned soloists. He has received both the Kossuth Prize and the Bartók-Pásztory Award.

Judit Németh is a soloist of the Hungarian State Opera House. Up until 2000, she was primarily considered a concert singer both in Hungary and abroad, but then appeared in Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, the Ring and Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival from 2000 to 2007. She has sung at La Scala, the Semperoper Dresden, the Liceu in Barcelona and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Between 2009 and 2013, as a member of Nationaltheater Mannheim, she sang Ortrud, Kundry and all three Brünnhildes in the Ring cycle. The Liszt Award-winner and Artist of Merit and Excellence has sung Kundry, Fricka, Brangäne, Ortrud, Waltraute and the Second Norn at the Budapest Wagner Days, all with tremendous success.

Zoltán Pad graduated from Budapest’s Liszt Academy and then continued his studies in Munich. After leading the Debrecen Kodály Choir between 2009 and 2014, he took the helm of the Hungarian Radio Choir. As a choirmaster, he has worked with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, Daniel Harding and Péter Eötvös and the Vienna Philharmonic, among others. He is an internationally acclaimed conductor who has conducted such excellent ensembles as Stuttgart’s SWR Vokalensemble, Leipzig’s MDR Rundfunkchor, Hamburg’s NDR Vokalensemble, Chœur de Radio France and Chamber Choir Ireland.

Dániel Pataky took up singing after first studying violin, graduating from the Liszt Academy’s opera department in 2010. A member of the Bielefeld Theater since 2012, he has also sung at the Hungarian State Opera, as well as in Debrecen, Dresden, Krefeld-Mönchengladbach, Regensburg, Heidelberg, Detmold and the Saaremaa Opera Festival. His principal roles include Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Don José in Carmen, Tamino in The Magic Flute, Matteo in Arabella, Max in Der Freischütz and Tebaldo in Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. He has given concerts in China, Japan, Romania, Austria, Hungary and Germany.

Etelka Polgár earned a master’s degree in American Studies before enrolling at the opera studio at Vienna’s Prayner Conservatory. She further honed her skills at master classes. She made her début as a singer as Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro at KlassikFestival Schloss Kirchstetten in Austria. In 2018, she portrayed the First Sheep in Bernstein’s Candide at Müpa Budapest. She has been involved in numerous productions as an assistant director and artistic assistant, including stagings of works by Wagner, Richard Strauss, Mozart and Donizetti. In 2022 she started her studies in the music theatre direction programme at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

In addition to his roles at his main opera house, the Hamburg State Opera, which include Loge and Mime in the Ring, Tichon in Katja Kabanova, Dr Caius in Falstaff, Aegisth in Elektra, Herodes in Salome and the Captain in Wozzeck, Jürgen Sacher has in recent years been a regular guest at the Berlin State Opera, as Dr Caius under Zubin Mehta, the Witch in Hänsel und Gretel and Monostatos in The Magic Flute, at the Budapest State Opera as Mime in Siegfried, at the Semperoper Dresden as Mime under Christian Thielemann, in São Paulo under John Neschling as Herodes and Aegisth, at the Theater an der Wien as the Dancing Master in Ariadne auf Naxos staged by Harry Kupfer and conducted by Bertrand de Billy, and at the Bavarian State Opera as Goro in Madama Butterfly.

Orsolya Sáfár is an Artisjus Award-winning soprano contracted as a soloist with the Hungarian State Opera. She earned her degree in voice and voice pedagogy from the Liszt Academy in 2004. The following year, a scholarship from the Hungarian Richard Wagner Society took her to Bayreuth. With awards from international singing competitions under her belt, she is a recognised part of Hungary’s classical music scene, as both a concert and song singer. Her principal roles include Adina, Norina, Pamina, Mimì, Musetta, Liù, Marguerite, Micaëla and Violetta. In addition to earning the Juventus Award (2013) and the Gusztáv Oláh Commemorative Plaque (2015), she was also named a chamber singer of the Hungarian State Opera in 2018.

German soprano Simone Schneider is sought-after in roles such as Sieglinde, Chrysothemis and Empress (Die Frau ohne Schatten). Since 2006 she has been ensemble member of the Stuttgart State Opera and she is a regular guest at the Semperoper Dresden, where she has sung Salome, Ariadne, Rosalinde and more. She had great success as Leonore in Fidelio at the Berlin and Hamburg state operas, as well as in Bologna. Further engagements took her to the Vienna State Opera, the Leipzig Opera and to Budapest. She has worked with conductors such as Simone Young, Asher Fisch, Kent Nagano, Ádám Fischer and Axel Kober.

Atala Schöck, as one of the most sought-after Hungarian mezzosopranos, participated at the Bayreuth Festival four years in a row, in its production of Parsifal conducted by Pierre Boulez and Ádám Fischer.

The Liszt Award-winning opera singer has appeared, among other venues, at Dresden’s Semperoper, at La Monnaie in Brussels, at Theater an der Wien as well as at Opéra Bastille in Paris. She has received great acclaim around the world for her performances of Judith in Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle. Audiences at the Budapest Wagner Days have been able to see her regularly since 2006.

Hartmut Schörghofer studied interior design in Linz and set design at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. In 1991, he started to regularly design sets and costumes for both drama and music theatres, as well as for ballet companies all over the world, in cities like Lyon, Dresden, Monte Carlo and Stockholm and ranging as far away as Russia and South Korea. His work has also earned great acclaim in Graz, Vienna, Ulm, Karlsruhe, Strasbourg, Erfurt and Salzburg. He regularly collaborates at the Oper Leipzig, the Halle City Theatre and the Staatstheater Braunschweig. In 2004, he also took up directing, with his most renowned productions including – along with Müpa Budapest’s Ring cycle – Bluebeard’s Castle at the Hungarian State Opera. He is professor at the University of Graz.

Egils Siliņš performs at the world’s leading opera houses, including the Vienna, Hamburg, Berlin and Bavarian state operas, La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, Semperoper Dresden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as at the Bayreuth Festival and in Zürich and Chicago. Next projects include his return to the Bayerische Staatsoper and Maifestival Wiesbaden in Lohengrin, the four villains in Les contes d’Hoffmann and Kurwenal at Semperoper and NNT Tokyo. His vast repertoire includes leading Wagner and Strauss roles like the Dutchman, Wotan-Wanderer, Amfortas, Klingsor, Telramund, Hans Sachs, Jochanaan and Barak, along with parts like Demon, Boris Godunov, the Grand Priest of Dagon, Mephisto and Scarpia. He has worked with such renowned conductors as Marek Janowski, Christian Thielemann, Philippe Jordan, Christoph von Dohnányi, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Fabio Luisi, Seiji Ozawa, Ádám Fischer, Andris Nelsons, Sebastian Weigle and Kazushi Ono.

Stuart Skelton is one of the finest heldentenors on the stage today, critically acclaimed for his outstanding musicianship, tonal beauty, and intensely dramatic portrayals of opera’s most challenging roles. Recent performances include Tristan und Isolde at Teatro San Carlo and the Bavarian State Opera, Die Walküre with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Parsifal with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, and the world première of Iain Bell’s Beowulf in performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Kálmán Strausz earned his degree in conducting at Budapest’s Liszt Academy after studying under Zoltán Vásárhelyi and István Párkai. He has worked as the head of the classical music department at Hungarian Television and as the choirmaster of the Kodály Choir Debrecen, the Hungarian Radio Choir, the Hungarian State Opera Choir and the Honvéd Male Choir. He received the Liszt Award in 1997 and was nominated for Grammy awards in two categories in 1998. He regularly serves on the juries of international choral competitions.

Károly Szemerédy began his music studies in Budapest, and later graduated from the Escuela Superior de Canto de Madrid. In 2008, he finished third in Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition. He has appeared at Teatro Real, the Palau de les Arts, Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki, La Fenice, Opéra National de Lyon, Theater an der Wien, Bayerische Staatsoper, and at the Salzburg Festival. He has regularly taken the stage at the Hungarian State Opera since 2017. His principal roles include Escamillo, William Tell (partnering with Juan Diego Flórez), Orest, Buebeard, Jochanaan, Klingsor, Vodńik (Rusalka) and Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande) and Dr Kolenatý (in Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair).

Szilvia Szilágyi obtained her degree from the Faculty of Music of the University of Debrecen, and is currently studying at the Liszt Academy under Éva Marton. Born in Debrecen, the singer was a member of the music department of the city’s Csokonai Theatre until 2012, when she went freelance. She won the Danubia Talents Music Competition in 2020 and first place with distinction at the Moscow International Music Competition in 2021. In that same year, she participated in the New Generation series directed by János Ács at the Csokonai Theatre, and on Margaret Island in Budapest she performed in Margit Szokolay’s opera Saint Margaret: The Nation’s Sainted Sacrificial Victim. In 2022, she made her role debut as Azucena in Il trovatore.

Iréne Theorin not only pursued her vocal training at the Academy of Music and the Royal Opera School in the Danish capital: in 2005-06 the Swedish soprano was also one of the heroes of the legendary Copenhagen Ring in her triple role as Brünnhilde. She conquered Bayreuth first in 2000, when she made her debut there as Ortlinde, and later again in 2008 as Isolde. New York’s Metropolitan Opera followed in 2009, again with her as Brünnhilde, in Die Walküre. A celebrated returning participant at the Budapest Wagner Days series for more than a decade, in 2017 she undertook to sing all three Brünnhildes in The Ring of Nibelung on three consecutive evenings.

The Turkish-German mezzo-soprano Deniz Uzun was born in Mannheim and studied voice both in her native city and in the United States at the Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington. A member of the Opera Studio of the Bavarian State Opera in 2015/16, she went on to join the Zurich Opera House from 2016 to 2021. Since then she has appeared in numerous productions, singing Carmen at the Salzburg Landestheater, Dido (Dido and Aeneas) at the Teatro Massimo Palermo, Olga (Eugene Onegin), A woman (Intolleranza 1960), Meg Page (Falstaff) and the Third Lady (The Magic Flute) at the Komische Oper Berlin, and Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus) at Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa.

Máté Vajda started designing, installing and distributing lighting technology systems after graduating from high school and later went on to complete the technical management course at the University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest. During this period, he worked as a lighting technician at several theatres, eventually moving into lighting design. He has served as the deputy manager of Müpa Budapest’s lighting team since the institution opened. His most important productions of recent years include the Budapest Wagner Days stagings of Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde, as well as the Krisztián Gergye Company’s production The Doll of Kokoschka.

Zita Váradi started her career at the Csokonai Theatre in Debrecen and joined the Hungarian State Opera House as a soloist in 2001. Best known for her opera roles, she has also enjoyed success as a concert performer over the past 25 years. Her primary roles include Susanna, Norina, Adina, Musetta, Pamina, Michaëla, Nedda, Zdenka, Liù, Madame Lidoine, Naiad, Frasquita, Marzelline, Zerlina, Clorinda, Lauretta and (in Kodály’s Háry János) the French Princess and the Empress. The Hungarian State Opera recognised her work on the stage with the title Chamber Singer of the 2012/13 season, and with the award founded by Dr and Mrs Andor Mándi. In 2016, she received the Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit.

Éva Várhelyi graduated from the Liszt Academy in 1998 with a degree in opera voice after studying under Zsolt Bende, Dénes Gulyás and Balázs Kovalik. Since then, she has served as a soloist at the Hungarian State Opera, where she has sung 44 roles so far, including the Composer, Xerxes, Octavian, Dorabella, Cherubino, Carmen and Prince Orlofsky. In 2007, as one of the winners of the Monteverdi International Singing Competition, she sang one of the lead roles in Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo in Verona and Mantua. She has made guest appearances in England, Japan, Finland, Munich and Kiev. She regularly gives song recitals and performs at oratorio concerts, and is a regular contributor to the international Budapest Wagner Days series. She celebrated the 25th anniversary of the start of her career in March 2023 by singing the role of Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle, partnering with Krisztián Cser.

Gábor Vida graduated as a choreographer from the University of Theatre and Film in Budapest in 2007. He has participated in performances at the National Theatre in Budapest, at the National Theatre Szeged, and at the Jókai Theatre in Komarno (Slovakia), the József Attila Theatre in Budapest, the Géza Gárdonyi Theatre in Eger, the Csokonai Theatre in Debrecen and Nyíregyháza’s Zsigmond Móricz Theatre. He is also widely recognised as a dancer and choreographer.

Stefan Vinke graduated from the Music Academy of Cologne. In 2000, he received the title “The year’s best young opera singer” from the international opera magazine Opernwelt. In the years that followed, he continuously developed his repertoire, which contains a number of Wagnerian roles. He has sung the title roles in Tristan and Isolde, Parsifal and Lohengrin, as well as Siegmund, Erik, Siegfried and Walther von Stolzing. He has performed at the most prestigious German opera houses, as well as at Covent Garden, New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals, in addition to the opera houses of Beijing, Madrid, Paris, Philadelphia and Seattle. He first appeared at the Budapest Wagner Days festival in 2015, singing Siegmund in Die Walküre and Siegfried in Götterdämmerung.

After graduating from the Liszt Academy, Gertrúd Wittinger continued her education at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. She has performed in the Austrian capital – at both the Volksoper and the Staatsoper – as well as at the Opéra Bastille in Paris and the Hungarian State Opera. She is a former member of the National Theatre of Szeged. A regular fixture at the Budapest Wagner Days, her repertoire includes contemporary opera roles, oratorios and art songs along with the classics.

Eszter Zemlényi is a singer with the Hungarian State Opera, having graduated from the Liszt Academy in 2013. A regular guest at festivals both in Hungary and abroad, she often appears in opera and oratorio performances here, as well as at song recitals. She won the Annie Fischer Scholarship three times, won the Emil Petrovics Singing Competition outright, took home a special prize from the József Simándy Singing Competition, and placed second at the Virginia Zeani International Singing Competition and third at the Klaudia Taev International Singing Competition. She is a dedicated chamber musician and has presented numerous contemporary works. Audiences have had the opportunity to see her in such roles as Melinda, Pamina, Blonde, Liza (La sonnambula), Titania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Belinda (Dido and Aeneas) and Dzufi (King Pomade’s New Clothes).

The Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1943 following an initiative by Ernő Dohnányi and established its international rank and reputation through its numerous concerts both in Hungary and abroad, as well as through CDs and radio recordings. The orchestra has further enhanced the fine reputation of Hungarian music culture in more than 50 countries across four continents. Its balanced sound, flexibility and preservation activities that promote the popularity and recording of contemporary Hungarian music have received international acclaim from critics, guest conductors, soloists and composers. The orchestra has participated in the Budapest Wagner Days since the start, receiving much acclaim. The orchestra’s chief conductor is Riccardo Frizza.

The Hungarian Radio Choir, currently led by Zoltán Pad, was formed in 1950. Its repertoire embraces all areas of choral singing, including opera and oratorio. Works by contemporary Hungarian composers are frequently featured in their performances. A frequent guest at prestigious international music festivals, the chorus has appeared at such events in Salzburg and Vienna. The list of famous conductors that the chorus has worked with includes Lamberto Gardelli, Lovro von Matačić, Kurt Masur, Yehudi Menuhin, Giuseppe Patanè, Helmuth Rilling and Yuri Simonov.

The Budapest Studio Choir, Hungary’s first professional project choir – the composition and size of which always change according to the needs of the work to be performed – was established in 1996 under the direction of Kálmán Strausz. The ensemble has collaborated on several productions of the Budapest Wagner Days series (Tannhäuser, Götterdämmerung) and the Hungarian State Opera House (Hunyadi László, Bánk bán, Aida, Don Carlos). They also took part in the Hungarian National Theatre’s stage production of Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher. They sang Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem in Bochum and Liszt’s Christus oratorio in Vienna, and accompanied Andrea Bocelli in Munich and Hamburg.

The Szupermodern Filmstúdió Budapest is one of Hungary’s leading film production companies, known particularly for its successful historically themed films. Its head producer, Tamás Lajos, has been credited with such films as The Ambassador to Bern, Demimonde, The Grey War, Traitors, Eternal Winter, Vault and Little Stories. In addition to creating film dramas for broadcasting on television or for screening in cinemas, the studio has released many documentary films, short film dramas and audio dramas.

Müpa Budapest commissioned Szupermodern Stúdió to take part in staging Der Ring des Nibelungen. Participating on the studios behalf are director Péter Fazakas, art director Zsuzsanna Koszti and producer László Bederna.

2023. szeptember 27.

EURÓPAI HIDAK: BUDAPEST–RÓMA A RÓMAI SANTA CECILIA AKADÉMIA ZENEKARA

RESPIGHI: RÓMAI TRIPTICHON

Közreműködik: Zsilka Alan – orgona, Cantemus Vegyeskar (karigazgató: Szabó Soma)

Vezényel: Fischer Iván

2023. október 4.

LIGETI 100 –

„A GIGANTIKUS PROTÉZIS” FASSANG LÁSZLÓ ORGONAESTJE

Közreműködik: Fassang László – orgona, Hammond-orgona, MIDI-orgona, zongora, Besnyő Dániel, Kiss Patrik – fényfestés

2023. november 1.

Mindenszentek

KÉT REQUIEM ORBÁN & MOZART

Közreműködik: Kristóf Réka – szoprán, Láng Dorottya – mezzoszoprán, Szilágyi Szilvia – alt, Rab Gyula – tenor, Alekszej Kulagin – bariton, a Magyar Rádió

Szimfonikus Zenekara és Énekkara

Vezényel: Kovács János

2023. november 12.

RISING STARS – EURÓPA ÚJ CSILLAGAI NOSFERATU – NÉMAFILM SEBASTIAN HEINDL ORGONAKÍSÉRETÉVEL

Moderátor: Fazekas Gergely

Beszélgetőtársak: Fassang László, Barkóczi Janka A koncert utáni közönségtalálkozót vezeti: Tóth Endre

2023. december 3.

Adventi Koncert

Közreműködik: Cantemus Kóruscsalád, a Magyar Rádió Gyermekkórusa, a Magyar Rádió Szimfonikus Zenekara

Vezényel: Szabó Dénes, Szabó Soma, Dinyés Soma

2023. december 13.

Kar Csonyi Orgonakoncert M Sz Ros Zsolt M T S A

Szegedi Bart K B La N Ikar

Vezényel: Valkai Dávid