A National Opera Abroad: Ferenc Erkel’s Opera Hunyadi László Performed Outside of Hungary
A National Opera Abroad: Ferenc Erkel’s Opera Hunyadi László Performed Outside of Hungary

Summary/Abstract: Of all the operas by Ferenc Erkel, we know the most about Erkel’s efforts to present abroad his second opera Hunyadi László, while the absence of similar data concerning the other operas may be the result of the fact that the composer himself and/or the National Theatre did not even try to have them performed outside of Hungary. For Erkel’s first two operas – Bátori Mária (1840) and Hunyadi László (1844) –, the National Theatre had a German-language score prepared after the premiere, and Franz Liszt, among others, tried to promote the premiere of Hunyadi László, which ultimately became one of the most performed Hungarian operas abroad. After Ferenc Bónis, Dezső Legánÿ, Katalin Szerző Szőnyi, and Inge Birkin Feichtinger, who have already published on this negative performance history, this study would like to highlight a few minor details that contrast with our previous perception of Erkel’s lack of interest in the distribution of his operas outside of the Hungarian capital’s National Theatre. Through the performance history of Hunyadi László, and by taking into account the performance copies surviving from the period as well as the contemporary press, we get an insight into the moves and changes that occurred within the theatrical/opera companies during the second half of the 19th-century as well.

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