Hippolyt,a lakáj

Two masterpieces of late 19th-century French sacred music make up the programme of this concert-hall celebration: Gabriel Fauré’s exquisitely beautiful Requiem and the Clovis Mass by the elderly Charles Gounod. Between the movements of the latter work, the audience will also become acquainted with four further gems from the Gallican tradition of church music, with one composition each by Alexandre Guilmant, Louis Aubert, Camille Saint-Saëns and Théodore Dubois.

The release of the volume A bilincs a szabadság legyen (‘Let the Shackles Be the Freedom’), a collection of the correspondence between Miklós Mészöly and Alaine Polcz, generated a significant level of interest in the writers’ private lives and literary work that, it is no exaggeration to say, continues to this day. Apart from the strong emotional bonds shared by several literary couples we could mention, it is perhaps the letters of these two authors that reveals the most thought-provoking ideas.

Das Rheingold is the introduction to the storyline, depicting the central conflict. Starting from a primeval state of peace, the opera shows how the original sin was committed, triggering a chain of events that eventually lead to complete annihilation.