Organization

Stage director

Bence Varga

Chorus master

Gábor Csiki

Singer

Spoken

Tünde Szalontay

Hagelmayer / Narrator

Baritone

Zsolt Haja

János Valuska

Soprano

Adrienn Miksch

Mrs. Pflaum

Tünde Szabóki

Tünde

Mária Farkasréti

A peasant woman

Bass-baritone

András Hábetler

A teacher

Bass

Krisztián Cser

Man in a woolen coat / Soldier

Tenor

Balázs Papp

The Prince’s adjutant

András Kiss

Mádai

János Szerekován

Volent

Attila Erdös

Chief Officer

Conductor

Kálmán Szennai

Hungarian State Opera

Others

Choir of the Hungarian State Opera

Orchestra

Hungarian State Opera Orchestra

Set designer

Botond Devich

Costume designer

Huszár Kató

Lőrinc Kósa

Nadabán

Lighting designer

Sándor Baumgartner

István Horváth

Director

Zoltán Bátki Fazekas

Guide

Translator

Judith Sollosy

Valuska

Budapest

Hungary

Péter Eötvös’s new opera takes us to a bare, grey world of an unknown yet familiar small town, and reveals the tragi-comedy world of the protagonist, newspaper delivery man, János Valuska. In the tradition of the Shakespearean fool, Valuska is different from the townspeople. He is an innocent, infatuated with astronomy and man’s position in the universe. The arrival in town of a circus - with, as star attraction, the world’s largest taxidermied whale - has explosive consequences.

With its world premiere on 2 December 2023, Valuska is an important event for the Hungarian State Opera and, more widely, for all those interested in opera today. Péter Eötvös, the internationally acclaimed composer who celebrates his 80th birthday in January 2024, was commissioned by the Hungarian State Opera in 2018 to compose his 13th opera and his first in Hungarian. It is based on the 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai, who won the International Man Booker Prize in 2015. ‘Valuska, a young man with a pure heart, becomes a victim of a manipulative society in the shadow of a stuffed whale’ says Péter Eötvös. He has transformed the novel into a performance that combines several genres of opera and theatre with the grotesque. This is a bare, grey world but one with a lot of humour, where the surreal turns painfully believable.

Eiffel Art Studios

Valuska Eötvös

Public

Approved

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