Édouard LALO: Le Roi d’Ys – overture
Ernő DOHNÁNYI: Ruralia Hungarica, Op. 32b
***
Béla BARTÓK: Bluebeard’s Castle, Op. 11, Sz. 48, BB 62 

Dorottya Láng mezzo-soprano
Gábor Bretz bass
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: György Vashegyi

For the opening concert of the 2025/2026 season, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and its Kossuth Prize-winning chief music director György Vashegyi invite the audience first and foremost on a pleasant retrospective by performing Le Roi d’Ys overture from Lalo’s opera, which will cast our minds back to the recent successful premiere of the work in Hungary. In playing the Dohnányi work Ruralia Hungarica and Bartók’s mystery opera, Bluebeard’s Castle, the orchestra will, as is always the case for season-opening concerts, pay tribute to the lasting values of Hungarian musical culture. In the two soloists for the opera, Dorottya Láng and Gábor Bretz, we welcome two outstanding singers who are also celebrated outside Hungary.

At its season-opening concerts, it is customary for the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra to pay tribute to the lasting values of Hungarian musical culture, but it is not unheard of for a significant work of the European canon to be heard in the spirit of openness. Under the baton of its Kossuth Prize-winning chief music director György Vashegyi, the first evening of the 2025/2026 season will open with just such a piece, the Le Roi d’Ys overture from Édouard Lalo’s opera. Although it achieved great success on its premiere in 1888, the work is rarely heard today but was very well received by the Müpa Budapest audience in January 2024, when the opera was performed as its Hungarian premiere. The performance of the overture here will be a handy reminder of the fact that a defining aspect of the work of the Hungarian National Philharmonic is to discover unknown treasures. Dohnányi’s Ruralia Hungarica and Bartók’s mystery opera, Bluebeard’s Castle, two unquestionable gems of Hungarian music history, will then be heard – with the opera’s two soloists being Dorottya Láng and Gábor Bretz, two members of the Hungarian singing community who have achieved international success.