The panels of the exhibition bring music history to life: we'll get to see Prokofiev in his family circle and in the company of his distinguished colleagues.

We'll gain an understanding of his alternately enviable and adversely afflicted life, of the husband who was horrible in his first marriage and passionately in love in his second, of the radically modern composer, as well as of the creative artist who was branded a formalist by the system and thus forced to serve the regime.

Perhaps surprising among the stories in the exhibition is the one of how the original version of the Russian composer's popular Romeo and Juliet culminated in a happy ending, or the interesting fact that it may not have been children he intended to educated with his unbeatably popular Peter and the Wolf as it was adults.

(Speaking of the work's popularity, the recordings on which such world-famous artists as David Bowie and Sophia Loren serve as the narrator on various recordings, with Mikhail Gorbachev also delivering the introduction on the latter one to boot, have contributed to its prominence.)

The exhibition will also show how Prokofiev beat the Cuban world champion José Raúl Capablanca at chess, how his film scores for Alexander Nevsky, Lieutenant Kijé and Ivan the Terrible, came to life independently in the concert hall, and how his ballet Cinderella met a ‘similar fate'.

But we shall reveal no more, except that this is an opportunity to gain some insight into the exciting behind-the-scenes secrets of a rich oeuvre.

Place: Palace of Arts Budapest

Address: 1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell utca 1.