But it doesn’t hurt, at this time of celebration, to recall that the path was not always smooth over the full length of the Italian master’s career until he eventually assumed the exalted place he now enjoys in the domestic repertoire.

Given that we are in the happy position that the history of 166 years since Verdi‘s initial reception in Hungary is inseparable from the great periods of Hungarian opera performance, this exhibition will endeavour to evoke how Verdi’s art was seen and interpreted at various individual times by its most important performers, what they saw as values worth presenting and in what manner, and to what extent they kept pace with the prevalent Verdi fashions of the time.

While only roughly a third of the composer’s rich life’s work has become established in the standard repertoire in the past century and a half, his early operas have also recently begun to be rediscovered and performed at least in concert or semi-staged form. It is with just such an intriguing production that the Palace of Arts now enriches the Verdi repertoire with the opera Attila, hitherto only ever performed in Budapest on an outdoor stage. It is to mark this production that an exhibition has been put together to illuminate important moments in the history of Verdi performances in the Hungarian capital.

Source: Palace Of Arts
Address: 1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell utca 1.