Péter Eötvös

In 1963 in Tihany, somebody addresses the writer Gábor Náday. He is reminded of a night drive in 1944 that saved his life. Painful memories start coming to Náday.

The grotesque comedy with crime elements takes place in a grocery store.

Jancsi is part of a closely knit gang of young engineers. They see the older engineers as mediocre, and have grand ideas about developing new inventions together. With changing living conditions the five friends start to grow apart. At a party Jancsi suddenly meets Éva Halk. They fall in love, and find common memories in the engagement in The Pioneer Railway at the age of 12.

Karoly Makk's heartbreaking story of two unmarried sisters who cast wistful glances back at their lives, but still believe in hope and love, earned an Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1974. In this follow-up to the director's internationally acclaimed Love, Makk once again exhibits his extraordinary skills at drawing emotionally compelling performances from his talented female leads. Makk's film opposes the bleakness of the outside world with passion, love, and loyalty.

From the ‘Arturo Toscanini’ Auditorium in Turin, as part of the Rai NuovaMusica series, conductor Pascal Rophé presents ‘Gli occhi che si fermano’ for orchestra by Francesco Antonioni and the Italian premiere of ‘T.S.D.’ for cello and orchestra by Giya Kancheli, performed by cellist Mario Brunello. The second half of the evening is entirely dedicated to the great Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös with ‘Reading Malevich’ for orchestra and ‘Dialog mit Mozart’, a piece for orchestra.

Péter Eötvös’s new opera takes us to a bare, grey world of an unknown yet familiar small town, and reveals the tragi-comedy world of the protagonist, newspaper delivery man, János Valuska. In the tradition of the Shakespearean fool, Valuska is different from the townspeople. He is an innocent, infatuated with astronomy and man’s position in the universe. The arrival in town of a circus - with, as star attraction, the world’s largest taxidermied whale - has explosive consequences.

From the intrigues and slander of the branch the painter Hódosi moves out to a hamlet at Hortobágy. He gets into conflict situation as well as he cannot endure that the political and economic elite of the neigbourhood would devastate the nature conservation area with hunting and (tax evading) goose husbandry.

Hungary, end of World War II. Five Hungarian soldiers desert their troop which has been directed to Germany. They are escaping with the help of a stamp and unfilled travelling warrants, trying to survive until the war ends.

Déserts was created to accompany a live performance of the work of avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). The Ensemble Modern, a contemporary music group based in Frankfurt, commissioned Viola to create a visual score for Varèse's Déserts after discovering notes by the composer referring to an unrealized image component of his composition. The resulting film/videotape was produced with the European television stations ZDF/Arte. In October 1994 Viola's Déserts premiered in a live performance in Vienna with conductor Peter Eötvös and the Ensemble Modern.