On the Thursday before Easter, a Stabat Mater from a composer with one of strangest careers in music history will be performed at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall. The hymn for the Virgin Mary at the base of the cross, written by a 13th-century Franciscan monk, was set to music by a number of composers before Rossini, with perhaps the work of Pergolesi the most famous. However, the story of Rossini's Stabat Mater could fill the pages of a novel.
The composer wrote his last opera aged ...37, after which he only composed now and again, preferring instead to cook and socialise. In 1831, he was travelling in Spain with a banker friend who was also owner of one of the most famous chateaux of the Bordeaux wine region, when he received a request to write a Stabat Mater from a state counsellor. He completed six movements but fell ill, so he asked a friend to complete the work, handing over the manuscript to the client as his own. When the state counsellor died, his heirs sold the rights to a French publisher. However, Rossini did not consent to the Paris première on the grounds that the work was not fully his own. The publisher went ahead with the performance regardless, but only the movements by Rossini himself were played. In the meantime, the composer had sold the rights to another publisher. Legal action followed, from which the second publisher emerged victorious. Rossini then wrote the missing movements - by now ten years after the original commission - with two brothers buying the performance rights for 8,000 francs. They in turn sold them on for 20,000 francs to the Russian Theatre in Paris, where the version of the work we know today was played for the first time.
We can now enjoy this special work as interpreted by outstanding soloists, under the baton of an Italian conductor who was discovered by Zubin Mehta and who currently holds the post of music director of the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw.
Presented by: Palace of Arts
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.
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.