New Year's at the Erkel

A New Year’s invocation at the Erkel Theatre: with a newly commissioned work by the devout poet János Dénes Orbán, which inspired painter György Verebes’s likewise newly commissioned picture and a choreography created by Edit Rujsz to the introductory segment – music depicting the primeval chaos birth to Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, one of the most beautiful of Christian creative works. The company of the Hungarian State Opera will also salute its audience with a New Year’s greeting from theologian and university professor Szabolcs Nagypál, representing the scholarly world, as well as a performance of the overture Rebirth by composer Zoltán Kovács, who also plays bassoon in the Opera’s orchestra. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a universal treasure and message, and a new year is a superb occasion for the hopeful upbeat sound of this piece whose Hungarian premiere was conducted by Ferenc Erkel, the Opera’s first chief music director.