Hungarians visit cemeteries and light candles in memory of their deceased loved ones.Continue reading
On November 1, visitors are welcome to the Fiume Road Cemetery not only with extended opening hours, but also with a Holy Mass and live music in the spirit of remembrance. On the following day, the Hungarian State Opera is inviting audiences with Verdi’s Requiem.
According to the National Heritage Institute (NÖRI), as part of the program, a festive mass will be held at the center of the cemetery, at the Holy Cross, from 3 p.m. This will be followed at 4:00 p.m. by choral concerts in front of the Malosik Mausoleum, featuring the Sapszon Ferenc Choir, the Amadeus Choir, and the Vox Hungarica Women’s Choir.
This year, the institute will also launch the program called “Place a candle on the graves of the greats of our nation,” which will include a tribute to the greats of the Hungarian nation: poets, writers, and politicians.
As in previous years, the Fiume Road Cemetery will be open extended hours on All Saints’ Day (November 1) and All Souls’ Day (November 2): this week from October 28 to November 3, between 7 a.m. – 8 p.m., and from November 4 to 6, between 7 a.m. – 6 p.m.
On November 2, All Souls’ Day, the Hungarian State Opera will present Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. The work will be performed in staged form, directed by Ádám Tulassay. In a statement, the State Opera expressed that
the oft-quoted remark by the world-famous conductor Hand von Bülow, originally intended as a negative review – “opera in a church robe” – illustrates the widespread view that Verdi’s Requiem, although borrowing its structure and text from the Catholic liturgy, does not have that much religious content.
Rather, it seeks to express the universal emotions associated with mourning, using devices familiar from the composer’s stage works.
Giuseppe Verdi was inspired to write the funeral mass by the loss of two compatriots he greatly admired, the composer Gioachino Rossini and the poet Alessandro Maznoni, a leading figure in the Italian Reunification.
His work expresses the fluctuating emotions of grief, the sadness and anger of loss, the fear of doom and the hope for peace, with a dramatic tension more familiar from opera scenes than from church services.
It was to portray these dramatic emotions on stage that the Opera commissioned director Ádám Tulassay. The young artist, who graduated in Berlin and Edinburgh, and his colleagues – set designer Angéla Csúcs, costume designer Krisztina Lisztopád, choreographer Márton Csuzi, animation designer Zsombor Czeglédi and lighting designer Tamás Pilinger – have created a visual world inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, which depicts death as the absence of life, the dominant theme of the piece.
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Lakatos Péter