Dr. Faustus

The Innermost Room (or tisztaszoba, literally, ‘clean room’) is an ornately furnished room in provincial homes, which is kept clean at all times and is reserved primarily for the reception of valued guests. In the Székesfehérvár Ballet Theatre’s dance theatrical production, this room with a special status in the house is a metaphor or symbol, denoting a ‘place’ where we keep the treasured secrets of our soul.

Mozart was insatiably in love with life. He embraced everything considered “sinful”: wine, cards, billiards. And his passion extended to musical ornaments: flowery acciaccaturas, trills, cadences others dared not risk, and chromatic runs. But there can be no doubt the main objects of his desire were women. He dedicated several of his masterpieces to one or other of his lovers, who were thus immortalised by these concert and opera arias.

“The sky does not begin with the stars, but at the tips of blades of grass.” On this special evening dedicated to his own compositions, Károly Binder revisits the most important stations of his creative career together with outstanding musicians with whom – as the quote from Mór Jókai suggests – he started out from the tips of blades of grass.