The Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Palace of Arts, in addition to presenting the annual Mahler celebrations and other hugely successful marathons of individual composers’ works, also collaborated between 2008 and 2010 in productions at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall of the three Mozart operas composed to librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte: Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. After a break of four years, Figaro is now revived under the direction of Iván Fischer. The co...nductor and director places the orchestra on the stage while he himself conducts the four-act opera without a score (!). As Fischer himself describes it, the concept behind the performance is that there is no concept. Whether this is true is up to each person to decide. In any event, this diverting and witty production is coloured with brilliant ideas at every turn. Premièred in 1786, this comic opera – like the other two works for which Da Ponte provided the libretto – proved both shocking and entertaining in its own time given its sensitive theme. The action of the Beaumarchais play on which the opera is based unfolds around the droit du seigneur – the lord’s right to take the virginity of his serfs’ daughters – and ends with the serfs emerging victorious. French censors long kept the work on their banned list until the king permitted its première in Paris, but the ensuing scandal resulted in the dramatist’s imprisonment. Although officially still prohibited in Vienna in 1785, Joseph II did not oppose somewhat bowdlerized performances of a play that poked fun at the privileges of the nobility, so that the court librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte received permission to write an operatic libretto based on the play. Only Mozart was needed to complete the endeavour – and so from scandal emerged one of the everlasting creations of European culture.
Parking information
We wish to inform you that in the event that Müpa Budapest's underground garage and outdoor car park are operating at full capacity, it is advisable to plan for increased waiting times when you arrive. In order to avoid this, we recommend that you depart for our events in time, so that you you can find the ideal parking spot quickly and smoothly and arrive for our performance in comfort. The Müpa Budapest underground garage gates will be operated by an automatic number plate recognition system. Parking is free of charge for visitors with tickets to any of our paid performances on that given day. The detailed parking policy of Müpa Budapest is available here.
Safe ticket purchase
Dear Visitors, please note that only tickets purchased from the Müpa website and official ticket offices are guaranteed to be valid. To avoid possible inconvenience, we suggest buying tickets to our performances and concerts via the mupa.hu website, the Interticket national network (jegy.hu) or at our official ticket offices.