Krisztina Lajosi: Staging the Nation: Opera and Nationalism in 19th-Century Hungary

The dawn of the twenty-first century has seen a dramatic increase of interest in nineteenth-century Hungarian opera and its most important composer and conductor Ferenc Erkel (1810–1893). Perhaps the highest profile project has been Csaba Káel’s 2003 film of Erkel’s opera Bánk bán (Bánk the Viceroy; 1861). Less widely circulated are productions and recordings of Erkel’s lesser-known operas – some of them first modern performances and recordings – undertaken by the Hungarian State Opera of Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca, Romania.1 In recent years this innovative small company has also produced József Ruzitska’s Béla futása (Béla’s flight, 1822), the first Hungarian opera the music of which has survived. The Hungarian State Opera in Budapest has had Erkel’s best-known operas Hunyadi László (1844) and Bánk bán in its repertoire almost continuously since their premieres, and has recently mounted new productions of them. In a move highly symbolic of the importance of Erkel’s work to Hungarian national identity, the Hungarian State Opera featured Bánk bán as the headliner for their first tour to the United States (New York City, fall 2018), which was the first professional performance of an Erkel opera in North America.2