In 2013, the world celebrates the anniversaries of two giants of the operatic genre: the bicentennials of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. While Wagner’s music has maintained a presence at the Palace of Arts for years, the works of Verdi have so far only been heard sporadically in the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, a venue otherwise superbly suited for opera performance. The Italian master’s early opera Attila, originally premièred in 1846, has never belonged among the most frequently performed of his works anywhere in the world. The story tells of the King of the Huns, who – according to the libretto – falls in love with the daughter of his enemy and perishes as a result. Along with Nabucco and The Lombards, this work fits into the series of operas created around the time of the fever over Italian unification, with no little reference to the contemporary political situation. In the title role, it would be difficult to find a more suitable interpreter than Giacomo Prestia, one of the world’s outstanding and most sought-after performers of 19th century Italian opera. A regular guest at La Scala in Milan, the Paris Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Zurich Opera House and numerous other major European stages, he has worked with illustrious conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti and Daniel Barenboim. Besides this, he is a passionate motorcyclist, tearing up the Tuscan countryside on his 1200cc machine, and keen on DIY and model aeroplanes. The Orchestra and Choir of the Kolozsvár Hungarian Opera is playing an increasingly frequent role in events on the music scene in Hungary – to the great delight of audiences. A further guarantee of the success of this performance is the presence of conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi, who mastered the Italian bel canto style from Giuseppe Patanè, a trustee of the 19th century performance traditions passed down to him by his own conductor father. As Morandi says: “You don’t have to conduct everything as it’s written in the score!”

Presented by: