AMBROISE THOMAS: Psyché
First version (1857)Concert-format opera performance in three acts, with one intermission, in French

Hungarian première, co-production of the Hungarian National Philharmonic and Palazzetto Bru Zane.
A recording will be made as part of the “Opéra français’” series – and released on the Bru Zane Label. The score was arranged by Palazzetto Bru Zane.

Psyché Hélène Guilmette
Éros Antoinette Dennefeld
Mercure Tassis Christoyannis
Dafné / Nymphe 1 / Un Écho Mercedes Arcuri
Bérénice / Nymphe 2 Anna Dowsley
Antinoüs / Un Jeune Garçon Artavazd Sargsyan
Gorgias Philippe Estèphe
Le Roi Christian Helmer

Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra
Hungarian National Choir (choirmaster: Csaba Somos)

Conductor: György Vashegyi

An integral part of the Hungarian National Philharmonic’s programming policy is for the orchestra and choir to offer several opera productions each season, frequently including rarities waiting to be discovered. The treasure from music history that the ensemble is now presenting under the baton of György Vashegyi and as part of their longstanding collaboration with Palazzetto Bru Zane, which has already yielded several – David’s Herculaneum, Massenet’s Werther and Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys – successful productions, in a concert-format performance is a mythologically themed opera by Ambroise Thomas (1811–1896). Psyché (1857) features an international cast of world-famous soloists.

The successful French opera composer Ambroise Thomas (1811–1896), a contemporary of Gounod and the great generation of Romantics, composed some twenty works for the musical stage. However, posterity has so far only come to appreciate two of them: Mignon, based on a novel by Goethe, and Hamlet, adapted from Shakespeare’s drama. In collaboration with Palazzetto Bru Zane, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir are now presenting the composer’s three-act 1857 opera Psyché, with the aim of rediscovering and recording it as part of their ’French Opera’ series. This is a chance to hear an unusual work, as Romantic composers mostly avoided the mythological subjects so favoured in the Baroque era. Thomas, however, set to music the mythological story of Psyché, who falls victim to her own beauty, and Éros, who attempts to save her. Psyché will constitute the fourth work that the Hungarian National Philharmonic has presented together with Palazzetto Bru Zane, after Félicien David’s Herculanum, Jules Massanet’s Werther and Éduard Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys. This production of Thomas’s opera conducted by György Vashegyi features an international cast of world-famous soloists.

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