Following the
former traditions the miracle happens year by year on the last
Saturday of the carnival season: the stage and the auditorium of
the Opera House transforms to the most beautiful ballroom of
Hungary. The ball is opened by more than a hundred debutante
dancers after a short opera programme, then comes the 'Alles
Walzer' so that people dance till dawn.
José Cura at the Budapest Opera Ball
Blikk2
2010-02-12
Budapest
– The Hungarian capital’s ball is inviting – at
least according to the famous Argentinean tenor José Cura (48), who
will star at tomorrow night’s 15th Opera Ball. "I am very attached to this country so
there was no doubt I would come,” Cura said during a press
conference yesterday.
The popular tenor arrived Wednesday evening and remains with us
until Sunday and even though the ball has many activities, Cura
doesn’t mind using some of the time to rest. “It is very cold, but
because I have so many commitments this month, it is not a problem.
I will stay mainly in the hotel and just try to go to the Opera
House.
“I came alone since the kids are in school. Of course, I did not
neglect the family: we spent New Year’s Eve together in the United
States,” said the guest of honor. “It is a complicated world we
live in, with some parents wanting their kids to continue in their
career, but I tell them they need to do whatever will make them
really happy in life. My older son, who is 21, lives in London and
studies acting, so he is sure to follow onto the stage.”
What does he think of television shows on which such singers as
Susan Boyle and Paul Potts have appeared? “I hope the audience is
not confused and believe that these are real opera singers. They
may be very talented but when they do not have the preliminary
education, they remain in the limelight for only two or three
years. They cannot stand the test of time. A real artist needs
twenty years.
“When I was 20 years old, I thought I was already a great artist. I
am only now realizing that though I had talent I understood only a
tenth of what I needed to know,” explained Cura, who said he was
excited about tomorrow night. “I returned home from American with
an extra four pounds, so I cannot include the frakkomba. Maybe after
three or four days of desperate dieting…” He laughed merrily.
Jose Cura star guest at 15th Opera Ball in
Budapest
Budapest, February 14 (MTI) - Budapest's
Opera House hosted the 15th Opera Ball late on Saturday. Among the
many foreign guests was the Argentine tenor José Cura.
Cura, who was the star guest at the event,
performed the songs Soneto IV and Somos Novios for
ball-goers.
"The task of the artist is to give people love and a positive
feeling for life," Cura said. "Artists are court fools or
clowns in the positive sense of the word," he added. "We are
beauty's terrorists."
Budapest Opera Ball 2010
More
Ball, Less Fuss
Impressions of the 15th Budapest Opera Ball
Pester Lloyd
14 February 2010
While the Vienna Opera Ball, frozen in its familiar rituals,
stiff-hipped and media overexposed, went across stage on Thursday,
the Ball of the Hungarian State Opera was something of a celebration
in Budapest on Saturday. Here, the elegance of the participants was
on display less ostentatiously and in a more natural way than in
Vienna. Down the Danube, one did without pesky mascots and
behaviorally challenged master builders as well as without the
medal-draped parade from politics, industry, finance and boulevard.
Instead, there was room for dancing and time for dining in Budapest.
In
the midst of the debutants, opera singer Ilona Tokody rendered the
Hungarian anthem like an opera aria; it was, after all, written by
the National Opera Composer Ferenc Erkel. This time around, Budapest
bested the Viennese in having a star of truly international stature
on stage, while regular staff members had to pull duty in Vienna.
Argentine tenor Jose Cura, who is singing primarily at the Opera
House in Zurich at present but is also well-established in all the
important opera houses of the world, presented two songs from
zarzuelas, Soneto IV and Somos Novios, as well as a
duet with Ildiko Komlasi (Lippen schweigen-- in German) after
he conducted the Opera Ball Orchestra (which later continued to play
tirelessly) in the duet of the Presentation of the Silver Rose
from Richard Strauss' opera "der Rosenkavalier".
Cura, charming and gracious, cut a good Opera Ball figure, all put
together: he conducted respectably and fittingly, sang with too
much restraint, however, and hardly let us hear his radiant tenor
voice, which has been heard here in the past. On the dance floor,
he carried a pretty little girl in tow, and in the end promised the
beaming general director Lajos Vass that he would soon return to the
stage of this beautiful house as he reminisced about that grandiose
gig of his at the Erkel Teater some ten years earlier.
On
this evening, Vass had reason to be pleased not only on account of
this pledge; this was also the first time that the 15th Opera Ball
in the 125-year existence of this opera house took place under his
direction. His idea to put on a truly Hungarian Ball here worked
very well from the very first all the way to the last measure of
this most pleasant evening and was received by those in attendance,
among them also many Austrians and Germans, with a great degree of
approbation.
[…]
All things considered, a very successful Hungarian Ball…
translation: Monica B.
