Ever since its 1956 première at Budapest's opera house, the Hungarian audience has traditionally heard the opera Bluebeard's Castle together with the pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin and the dance drama The Wooden Prince. This time around, the BFO will be presenting the latter two written for the dance stage in a fully staged version.
"It may sound strange,” said Béla Bartók on the day The Wooden Prince was premièred, "but I confess it was the disregard for my opera Bluebeard's Castle that compelled me to write this ballet. As some may know, that work of mine flopped at an opera competition… I love my first opera so much that when Béla Balázs sent me his libretto for the ballet, I immediately thought that with its colourful, rich and varied plot, this spectacular ballet would make it possible to stage my two works toget...her on a single night.” And indeed, the piece's thundering success did go on to pave the way for Bluebeard's Castle.
Bartók found the story for The Miraculous Mandarin in the journal West, and started setting it to music in 1918. "The music will be diabolical, if I get it right... a terrible din, clattering, crashing, honking; I will lead the listener from the bustle of a busy big city street to a squalid slum,” wrote the composer to his wife. Through Menyhért Lengyel's pantomime script, Bartók explored and set to music the great questions of human existence with primal scenes depicting male and female, passion and vulnerability, and pleasure and pain.
Presented by: Budapest Festival Orchestra
Parking information
We wish to inform you that in the event that Müpa Budapest's underground garage and outdoor car park are operating at full capacity, it is advisable to plan for increased waiting times when you arrive. In order to avoid this, we recommend that you depart for our events in time, so that you you can find the ideal parking spot quickly and smoothly and arrive for our performance in comfort. The Müpa Budapest underground garage gates will be operated by an automatic number plate recognition system. Parking is free of charge for visitors with tickets to any of our paid performances on that given day. The detailed parking policy of Müpa Budapest is available here.
Refreshments – Without the Queue
Thanks to our new catering service at the Átrium Snack Bar, you can forget about waiting in line during intermissions for some refreshments and get your order prepped especially for you by the time the intermission actually starts. Find out more about pre-ordering here.
Safe ticket purchase
Dear Visitors, please note that only tickets purchased from the Müpa website and official ticket offices are guaranteed to be valid. To avoid possible inconvenience, we suggest buying tickets to our performances and concerts via the mupa.hu website, the Interticket national network (jegy.hu) or at our official ticket offices.