Pannon Philharmonic

Conductor

Gergely Vajda

Soloist

Mária Farkasréti

Régine - soprano

Je Ni Kim

Marie - soprano

Botond Ódor

André - tenor

Máté Sólyom-Nagy

Philippe - baritone

Róbert Alföldi

director

About the Programme

Prima Donna is one of the recent years’ operas that has earned the most resounding international success. The piece was written by a Canadian-American singer and poet Rufus Wainwright with a collaboration of Bernadette Colomine, in 2009. The Prima Donna, with a plot from the 1970s Paris, as its title suggests, is a so called artist opera: you can follow a day of a once popular and renowned soprano, who using her last chance would like to get a part, meaning her former success, hoping that through it she can break out from the twilight of being forgotten and ignored. The work, which had a debut at the Manchester International Festival in 2009, was shortly after that premiere in the United States, in New York; now it can be even listened to as a recording: the two-part CD with the music of the opera was published by the Deutsche Grammophon in 2015. 

For the 10-year-long existence of the Armel Opera Festival, the Pannon Philharmonic has participated in staging of numerous contemporary operas. Playing Rufus Wainwright’s opera means: keeping going on this noble series in 2017.