Saturday, May 19
We went to see Die Fledermaus at the Erkel Theater. This theater is presenting all Opera productions while the State opera house is closed for renovations. The theater was built in 1918 and has Art Deco light fixtures, excellent acoustics and seating for about 1,800 people.
Our tickets were for seats 9 and 10 in row 4 of the balcony. We found our seats easily and settled in for the night – or so we thought. Soon after a large group of people came by and insisted we were sitting in their seats. We showed our tickets to the usher and she pointed us to another section. We discovered that there were four groups of seats in each row with the same numbers. Our tickets, written in Hungarian, were for the right center section. We never thought to translate our tickets.
Die Fledermaus, sometimes translated as The Bat, is an operetta by Johann Strauss II. It premiered in Vienna in 1874. It is usually performed around New Year’s Eve and, although written in German, is often performed in the local language. The performance we attended was in Hungarian without subtitles. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue but this opera is about 50% spoken and if you can’t understand the dialog it can detract from your enjoyment. For us it would have been better if it had been done in German. The plot is typically silly and the jokes are very dated although many renditions update the dialog to make it more relatable. It was impossible for us to know the direction this production took.
The opera was performed by their national orchestra: The Pannon Philharmonic and the National Theatre of Pécs Chorus and Dance Ensemble. The singers were first rate but we felt that the overall impression was disappointing. The orchestra had only a casual association with intonation and many times was not in sync with the vocalists.
Distance walked: 5.4 miles
Sunday, May 20
Another day another opera. This time it was Rigoletto by Verdi. This opera, which premiered in 1851, is considered to be Verdi’s first mature work. The story is centered on a court jester (Rigoletto), his daughter (Gilda) and Rigoletto’s employer, the Duke of Mantua. This piece was also performed at the Erkel Theater by the same ensemble from the previous night. As expected the opera was performed in Italian with Hungarian subtitles. For us, Italian was a welcome change and since we knew this opera well we had no issues following along.
During Die Fledermaus the orchestra had occasionally swamped the singers. We had attributed this to our balcony seating. For this performance we were seated center orchestra and the balance was even worse due to the larger orchestra required for this work. Once again the vocalists were very strong. We found the sets to be rather disappointing. They were simplistic and unimaginative. The orchestra’s intonation hadn’t improved and the additional brass only made things worse. Neither opera performance was worthy of a national theater. Our experience at The Messiah a few days ago had raised our expectations but these performances were not up to the same level.
Distance walked: 4.5 miles
Tuesday, May 22
We started the day by eating a late breakfast at a cafe that Andrea had promised had the best rétes (Hungarian Strudel) in the city. She was right. They were wonderful. The pastry was light and flaky and they were generously filled with all sorts of things. We couldn’t resist the ones filled with cabbage as they were still warm from the oven. We also tried the sour cherry and sour cherry with chocolate. We washed it all down with a couple of cappuccinos. We plan to go back and try some of the other flavors.
(Cherry and Cherry/Chocolate Rétes. We Already Ate the Cabbage)
Afterwards we walked down along the river and inquired about cruises to nearby cities. We continued down to Central Market where were bought some sausages, bread and cheese. There are many cheeses here that we don’t recognize but we’re determined to try as many as possible.
On our way home we passed a memorial to Bloody Thursday. It refers to October 25, 1956 when the Soviets violently put down an anti-communist demonstration. The building, across from the House of Parliament, is one of many that bears the scars of bullets fired on that day.
(Bloody Thursday Memorial)
In the evening we attended a concert at the Franz Liszt Academy. The concert hall is used by both students and professional ensembles. The rather intimate theater is decorated in the Baroque style with generous amounts of gold leaf and beautiful crystal chandeliers. The back of the stage is dominated by an elegant set of pipes for the organ. An elevated choir loft is situated between the organ pipes and the stage. Tours of the entire academy are available for about $12 per person but we opted for seeing a concert there instead.
(Liszt Academy Concert Hall)
The program featured The Zuglói Filharmóniával orchestra. The program started with a choral piece that we’d never heard before. It was Mendelssohn’s Israel in Egypt, which is based on Handel’s work of the same name. It is an unremarkable piece of mostly homophonic music but the performance showed it off as best as possible.
The second piece, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, featured the conductor as violin soloist. The leaderless orchestra did its best to follow along but had difficulty with the constantly changing tempi. We would recommend that the soloist choose a single vocation as neither his conducting nor his playing were polished.
The program ended with a performance of one of our favorites: Brahms’ Symphony Number Four. It is a challenging work with exposed parts, difficult transitions and syncopated rhythms. The violists, clarinetists and bassoonists did a particularly good job with their difficult and intimidating solos. The trumpets and french horns struggled with their parts. The piece lacked a coherent interpretation. What we heard was a bunch of musicians simply playing their roles. The difficult transitions lacked finesse and the dynamics were due almost entirely to the orchestration rather than purposeful performance. We would expect a longtime professional group to perform to a higher standard.
Distance walked: 9.2 miles
It’s a good thing you’re leaving Budapest soon because I’m very sure the you two will not be welcomed sights at too many orchestral performances in the near future there. 😏
It’s a shame you can’t read Hungarian (or whatever they call the language) because I’d be interested to know what the local reviews said. Do you think they would be honest?
Yeah, we’re way harsh. Actually I had some proposed some other language but Deborah made me tone it down. Our blog is getting more attention than we ever expected. We can see statistics that show that people are reading it all over the world – just not enough to get us banned from any countries/concerts. We’ve liked a lot of the performances we’ve seen (we saw several in Sofia too) but if you’re going to hold yourself out as a professional and charge for people to attend you’d better have the goods. We may not be as educated as some but we like to think we know something about music.