Balogh Máté: Tél, avagy a fal füle / LISZT ÜNNEP 2025

Performed by: Katalin Ladik, Eszter Balogh
Featuring: Weiner Ensemble (artistic director: Csaba Pálfi), Pax et Bonum Chamber Choir

Conductor: Boldizsár Kiss

Libretto: Renátó Fehér
Production design, costume: Hanna Erős
Assistant to the director: Ráhel Solténszky
Director: Máté Szilvay

Part concert, part theatre, fusing a musical play with an oratorio and factual elements with fictional ones, this piece is set in the basement of the Budapest Embassy of Czechoslovakia, at the turn of 1944 and 1945. For months, Emanuel Zima (his surname means ‘winter’), the former caretaker of the embassy and his son, Josef gave shelter here to Jews who were persecuted by the German and Hungarian Nazis. As it recounts the events, Winter, or the Ear of the Wall speaks of remembering as an act forming individual and community identity. What is remembering and what does it mean, for an individual or a community, to keep silent about something? What does it mean to be a hero, a survivor, a victim? As they focus on the complex relationships between living as an individual and as part of a collective, Máté Balogh’s music, the text delivered by the narrator, and the choral movements that feature diverse techniques explore the lyrical and dramatic possibilities of Renátó Fehér’s libretto.

This production of the Liszt Fest is presented by Müpa Budapest as a joint event with the Liszt Academy.