Armel opera competition and festival looks forward to busy 2014

Budapest, December 27 (MTI) – The Armel opera competition and festival, which promotes Hungarian talent in international opera through co-productions, has expanded and is looking forward to exciting new productions in 2014, Armel’s founder and chief told MTI in an interview on Friday.

Agnes Havas highlighted this year’s production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle at the Autumn Festival in Normandy, which featured Hungarian soloists Adrienn Miksch and Krisztian Cser with the Pannon Philharmonic, conducted by Daniel Kawaka.

“It was good to see that the majority of the audience was young; so the French know something about educating audiences,” she said, adding that the response was overwhelming and no one would have thought that a work by Bartok would be received so enthusiastically.

Havas added a new Hungarian production would definitely take place at the Normandy festival next year, and the details would be decided on in January.

Besides the Hungarian state opera house, Armel Festival is the only Hungarian outfit to belong to the Opera Europa, and Armel has been working with French classical music channel Mezzo since its inception, she noted.