Béla Szente: Rigócsőr király (King Thrushbeard), puppet show, performance of the Csodamalom PuppetTheatre

What does “Plus” refer to in the new, more straightforward name of the festival Bartók Plus? Our mission, in short.

It refers to opera life after Bartók. It refers to the fact that the future of the opera genre lies with the birth of new popular opera capable of addressing broad audiences, on the one hand, and with performances making opera accessible to the widest possible public, on the other.
With this mission in mind, we are organizing the finals of “Key to the Future”, the first opera composition competition in the hope of bringing to light new popular operas addressing just everyone. The audience is also counted on in choosing the hit opera of the future from among the works competing for the public’s appraisal.

We endeavour to get more and more people to consider the days of the Bartók Plus Festival a personal feat. Last year’s resounding success, the free performance of Tosca at the Avas Lookout Tower, which became publicly known as our "Opera for Thousands" programme, with a reference to the size of the audience made obvious the necessity to continue this initiative. In the Verdi year we are producing the Most Popular Opera Composer’s most popular work: La Traviata in the streets of Miskolc, as a popular opera for the man in the street.

We strive to make everybody feel that this Opera Festival is their own, ant that we want everyone to take their share of it; either within the walls of the Miskolc theatre or in the open-air performances.

Let us celebrate together that Opera Belongs to Everyone.