{"id":49742,"date":"2019-02-23T23:44:05","date_gmt":"2019-02-23T21:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=49742"},"modified":"2019-02-23T23:44:05","modified_gmt":"2019-02-23T21:44:05","slug":"hungarian-cultural-year-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=49742","title":{"rendered":"Hungarian Cultural Year in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hungarian Cultural Year in Israel will celebrate 30 years of diplomatic relations between Israel and Hungary, with music, dance, theatre, art and culinary delights from March 11 \u2013 October 26, 2019.<\/p>\n

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Budapest Operetta Theater – Gala Operetta\/Photo: Eszter Gordon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Opening the program will be Budapest’s Operetta Theater, well known and beloved among Israeli audiences, with a gala show featuring favorites from operettas such as Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus<\/em>, Franz Leh\u00e1r’s The Merry Widow<\/em>, Emmerich K\u00e1lm\u00e1n\u2019s\u00a0The Cs\u00e1rd\u00e1s Princess<\/em> and Countess Maritza<\/em>. Joining the Budapest Operetta Theater\u2019s 80 soloists and orchestra members especially for this performance will be the Hungarian National Dance Ensemble and a folklore band. Performances will take place on March 11th<\/sup> at the Jerusalem Theatre and on March 13th<\/sup> and 14th<\/sup> at the Israeli Opera-Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center.<\/p>\n

Midnight East writer Lior Levy on Operetta:<\/p>\n

\u201dThe operetta tradition differs both from traditional opera and musical theater and has a unique language of its own. It features large-scale chorus numbers with traditional dances, beautiful duets and arias, and an infectious happy energy that will have you tapping your feet minutes after the curtain rises.<\/p>\n

Opera was still immensely popular in the early 1900s, but the emergence of new and different styles and approaches to composing and to art in general made way for new sub-genres. The most obvious of these is the musical, but before its arrival, another approach to light opera began a surge of creativity among the composers of Europe, and created an art form that witnessed the major events of the period.<\/p>\n

Operetta actually stems from the\u00a0op\u00e9ra comique<\/em>\u00a0tradition, which in the mid-nineteenth century was becoming too serious for some tastes (the most famous\u00a0op\u00e9ra comique<\/em>\u00a0today is\u00a0Carmen<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 definitely not known for its light themes or plotline). The\u00a0op\u00e9ra comique<\/em>\u00a0didn\u2019t necessarily indicate humorous subjects, but it did involve realist themes, scenes of daily life, and \u201cregular\u201d characters (as opposed to the royals, historical figures and exotic scenes that dominated classical and nineteenth century opera).<\/p>\n

Operetta continued to develop in France with Offenbach, in England with Gilbert and Sullivan, and in Austria-Hungary with Johann Strauss II. One of the composers who continued Strauss\u2019 legacy was the Hungarian-born Emmerich K\u00e1lm\u00e1n (in Hungarian, K\u00e1lm\u00e1n Imre), who is considered, along with his compatriot Franz Leh\u00e1r, one of the leading composers of the Silver Age of operetta.” (link to the full article<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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