Boito: Mefistofele *****
Hungarian State Opera, Budapest, 28th May 2015
Rarely performed, Boito’s Mefistofele is an audacious, spectacular opera, needing an audacious, spectacular staging to do it justice. That’s exactly what it gets in Balázs Kovalik’s production for Hungarian State Opera, pulling in audiences for the past five years. Kovalik throws the entire kitchen sink at it. Not everything made sense, but by the time Faust and Helen of Troy were cryogenically frozen in a space-age version of Ancient Greece(!), I was completely swept along. Add Golden Age huge voices and it made for a tremendous evening.
© Zsófia Pályi
Read the full review on Bachtrack.