Mária Gyurkovics

This concert film stages a never-realized gala at Budapest’s Opera House, stringing together eleven diverse numbers - from operetta and folk dance to popular songs - introduced by Vera Sennyei’s tongue-in-cheek on-stage announcements. Though framed as a live opening night, most performances were in fact shot in television studios, creating a playful pastiche of televised spectacle rather than a traditional concert film.

Buda is mastered by the Turks. Student Gábor and his companion flee a troop into the castle, just in the garden of Gül Baba. Gábor and Leila, the daughter of Gül Baba fall in love with each other. Ali pasha, who wants to marry the girl, has the two Hungarians caught in order to let them be executed.

We have linguists, we have literary men, we have newspapers, actors, musicians, but we have no national opera!", lamented the champions of national revival in the middle of the last century. Hungarian music culture at home is limited to the performance of works by foreign composers. And the public demands Hungarian opera, and such a challenge is not easy to meet. So let's see who is up to the task!