The new piece, completed 5 years ago, is based on a “unity of dream, reality, and pretention”, the composer said. The plot takes place at a sitting in the court of a Russian grand duke, where participants evoke a strange lady, the object of their desire.

Selmeczi said he had composed most of the Spiritualists in Rome, and wrote the libretto in cooperation with Csilla Péntek based on an Aleksandr Blok play.

He said he had chosen Italian “to meet a challenge of writing in the mother tongue of the opera, that of Verdi and Puccini”. Some of the scenes are in Russian, however, “to evoke the ethos of late 19th century Russia”.

Source www.hungarymatters.hu

Follow that link to sign-up for MTI’s twice-daily newsletter.