The schedule for this year’s Budapest Wagner Days festival features, alongside the four performances of the Ring cycle in the production that was renewed technically in 2019, a unique concert.

For their ‘Best of Wagner’ programme, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, which is celebrating its centenary this year, has selected excerpts from the composer’s entire oeuvre to be performed under the baton of the artistic director of the festival, Ádám Fischer.

From the overture to Der fliegende Holländer to The Ride of the Valkyries, this event offers an assortment of famous passages whose magic still amazes after the hundredth listening.

This concert is a great opportunity for those who are just getting to know Wagner to immerse themselves in the German composer’s immortal music, which also exerted a huge influence on Hollywood soundtracks.

The four evenings of the Ring promise yet another spiritual pilgrimage, engaging with questions that sensitively affect our times as well, with all the beauty of the legendary staging, renewed but still preserving its original character, and with singers of remarkable talent.

Appearing as Wotan (but replaced by the world-famous bass-baritone Egils Silins for the character’s outing as the Wanderer in Siegfried) will be the monumental Günther Groissböck, with Müpa Budapest audience favourite Christian Franz tackling Loge, the formidable Hungarian (a source of pride for us) Péter Kálmán taking the stage as Alberich and the unforgettable Iréne Theorin as Brünnhilde.

And of course, we will have the broad-minded and infinitely sensitive Ádám Fischer on the podium to define the spirit of the production.

Source and detailed program: mupa.hu