The Viceroy Bánk
Details
In Brief
The text and musical material for the production have been created using both the original and the baritone versions.
In 1844, following on the heels of his triumph in the competition to set Ferenc Kölcsey's Hymnus – today the national anthem of Hungary – to music, Ferenc Erkel set about looking at the possibilities for using József Katona's much-attacked drama Bánk Bán as the subject for an opera. History made the period of composition a lengthy one: first came the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848/49, and censorship by the dictatorship that followed meant that the audience would have to wait until 9 March 1861 before the work could be performed in its entirety at Pest's National Theatre. As a result of, or in spite of, the high-level additions and revisions, the remarkable aspect of the following performances of the ever-acclaimed Bánk Bán is the fact that the text and musical material were created using both the work's original version and the 1939 revision – the one best know to the wider audience – credited to Kálmán Nádasdy. The storyline thus most closely mirrors the thinking of original playwright József Katona, without forcing us to dispense with the now-timeless grand aria "Hazám, hazám" ("My homeland, my homeland").
Parental guidance
Events
Premiere: Sept. 9, 2017
Synopsis
Setting: Visegrád and the banks of the River Tisza in the early 13th century, during the reign of King Endre II
Act I
While King Endre is off at war, Queen Gertrud is entertaining her Meranian retainers with an evening of merrymaking. There, Melinda, the wife of Bánk bán, attracts the eye of the queen's younger brother, Ottó. Petur bán, the leader of the “restive” Hungarian noblemen, looks on the festivities with disdain. The malcontents warn him to be careful and ask him to sing a drinking song. After delivering his resentful song, Peter tells his companions that he has secretly sent a messenger after Bánk to ask him to come back and see, with his own eyes, the double threat looming over the country and his own wife, Melinda.
Melinda reacts coldly to Ottó's public courtship and is appalled to realise that Queen Gertrud herself is willing to support the liaison. Pained, she recalls her earlier happiness with Bánk and hopes for her husband's swift return. Ottó complains about his lack of progress to Biberach, who wishes to make use of the prince for his own designs. Meanwhile, news arrives of the king's victory, and the court celebrates with dancing.
Ottó detains the departing Melinda and resumes his advances. Bánk watches in silence as Ottó kneels before Melinda. He leaves in haste, before he can witness his wife's firm rejection of the prince.
Then both Bánk and Ottó ask for advice from Biberach, who gives Ottó various powders (an aphrodisiac for Melinda and a sedative for Gertrud). To Bánk, however, he reveals that Ottó's path thus far has been cleared by the queen herself. After Bánk decides to seek redress from the king, the knight attempts to convince him that he has no chance of success. His heart aching, Bánk thinks of Melinda, while Biberach exults in his approaching victory over Gertrud.
The festivities gradually conclude, and Gertrud dismisses her guests. Longing for Bánk, Melinda is comforted by her retainers. Boldly, she tells the queen that she does not wish for the licence that she has offered, provoking an angry response from Gertrud. Believing Bánk to be far away, the malcontents swear to avenge him.
Act II
Bánk arrives, consumed with pain over the country's woes and his own damaged honour. He resolves to approach Gertrud and reveal the country's problems to her. Right then, the elderly peasant Tiborc enters. At first, Bánk takes him for a bandit, but then recognises a scar on the man's head: Tiborc once saved Bánk's life in a long-ago battle. He presses a purse into the haggard man's hand. Biberach arrives with horrible news: Melinda has been dishonoured. Soon, the distraught woman herself appears, on the brink of madness. Bánk curses their child, but Melinda's pleading and the memory of her old beauty and purity compel him to forgive her. He then asks Tiborc to accompany his wife – who is being tormented by an awful vision of a swiftly flying arrow – and their child to his castle on the bank of the Tisza.
In spite of the late hour, Bánk heads for Gertrud's chambers. The queen demands an explanation for his sudden return, while he calls her to account for not even attempting to remedy the country's wounds. After she threatens him with death, Bánk also holds her responsible for Melinda's lost honour. Gertrud curses Bánk, Melinda and Ottó. The latter enters upon hearing his sister's cries for help, but flees at the sight of Bánk. Gertrud draws a dagger, only to be overpowered by Bánk.
Act III
A storm overtakes Tiborc, Melinda and her child on the banks of the Tisza. Tiborc urges for them to cross, but Melinda is no longer aware of the world around her. Her own tragedy returns to her in a series of deranged hallucinations of a little bird. She sings a lullaby to her little son and then casts herself into the raging river with the boy in her arms.
In the palace, Endre II and his court are gathered around Gertrud's catafalque. A royal officer reports that he has killed Petur, the queen's murderer. He describes how he found two letters on Gertrud's table, in which Bánk bán warned her of the danger posed by the faction. Bánk enters and tosses his chain of office, the badge of his authority, onto Gertrud's coffin. He admits to the murder, but will not accept the king's judgement over him. His punishment is delivered not by the king, but by the story told by Tiborc, who has arrived with the bodies of Melinda and their son. He has lost everything. He breaks down and dies of grief.
Media
Reviews
“The sets (by Olekszandr Bilozub) are superb: the enormous glass wall of the ballroom with its gothic window silhouettes makes for a nice contrast with the phalanstery-like walls In the funeral scene, the lighting is brilliant. Costume designer Viktória Nagy clearly revelled in the task and solved it brilliantly."
Adrienn Csepelyi, Népszava
Opera guide
Introduction
The status of Bánk Bán (The Viceroy Bánk) as the national opera also means that, over time, it has evolved into a collective creation to which several people contributed their input – valuable and debatable at once. Back in the 1930s, opera director Miklós Radnai initiated the modernization of the two most popular Erkel operas, and after Hunyadi László, in 1940 came the radical reworking of Bánk Bán by Nándor Rékai, Kálmán Nádasdy, and Gusztáv Oláh, which virtually created a new piece: quoting Vörösmarty’s Late Desire in the protagonist’s Act I romance, shortening Biberach’s part in favour of Petúr, and shifting the boundary between Acts II and III. What’s more, partly due to a supposed shortage of tenors, partly with the great Imre Palló in mind, a baritone version was also prepared for the title role (and a bass part for Tiborc, originally a baritone). In 1953, however, the soaring tenor voice of József Simándy reclaimed the title role, becoming the Bánk ideal for generations, though at this point Jenő Kenessey introduced further modifications to the musical material of the opera.
In practice, then, we can speak of at least two, or even two-and-a-half different versions of Bánk Bán. Since the 2010 bicentenary of Erkel’s birth, when the critical edition of the original work was published, a true abundance of possibilities has opened up for opera professionals. They may perform Bánk in its original form uncut or with cuts, present the 20th-century adaptation with either a tenor or baritone in the title role, or even combine these versions. Indeed, the Hungarian State Opera’s most recent production in 2017 chose precisely this latter approach, blending the original form with the baritone adaptation in Attila Vidnyánszky’s staging: closing with the transcendent, one might say redemptive, appearance of the young figure of the future Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.
Ferenc László
The play with different musical idioms
At times one has the feeling that Katona’s Bánk Bán was almost meant to be an opera libretto from the start: the legal issue raised at the end of the drama seems almost superfluous, and Shakespeare would probably have reshaped the tragedy quite radically. The opera manages with less action, and has at its disposal a richer set of tools for painting the inner life and for freezing phenomena into tableaux. Perhaps the most exciting feature of the work is the play with different musical idioms, precisely that which contemporary critics often regarded as uneven: Erkel’s Italian-French and German tendencies are regularly intersected by Hungarian-style melodic writing. This interplay also serves dramaturgical purposes, for instance in the scene of the queen’s murder, where, as István Németh G. also observed, in the debate between the “foreign” queen and the “heroic” tyrannicide, the Hungarian idiom gains the upper hand. Criticism naturally focused primarily on the Hungarian vein: for example, in 1902 István Sonkoly saw in the scene by the banks of the Tisza the manifestation of “sincere Hungarian melancholy,” while he regarded Melinda’s aria as nothing less than a work of “ancient Turanian character,” of ethereal beauty.
Since Bartók and Kodály we know that the archetypal structures of Hungarian folk music are more complex than Erkel’s conception, but his attempt to create a musical past undoubtedly blends in fascinating ways with the increasingly conventionalized operatic language of European Romanticism. Yet Erkel’s opera cannot be reduced to an eclectic “end result” aimed at constructing a national paradigm: for this very reason it cannot be handed over to adaptations that, for instance, would reshape it in the spirit of folk or realist drama. The essence of the work lies precisely in the arrangement of the threads of its rich musical texture—in the play with which Erkel integrates an emphatically Hungarian theme into the emphatically European operatic tradition.
Zoltán Csehy
The director’s thoughts
Due to our geopolitical position in Hungary, we – together with many other Central European peoples – are stuck between two worlds. On the one hand we have our Asian origins, Asian roots, and, on the other hand, our eternal yearning towards the West. We have always been moving to the west along with the sun, just like the vast majority of migrating peoples. And this situation brings all kinds of results. A duality of self: we are no longer Eastern, but nor are we yet Western. There are truths, attitudes to the world, forms of existence and ideas about the future that are not the same in the East as in the West. To some extent, we play the role of a lightning rod, or to put it more precisely: all of these issues shoot through us like sparks. And this is what Bánk bán is about. This is because, on the one side, there is Gertrud and the Meranians with their own truth, and this truth is obviously a valid one, while on the other side, there is Bánk bán’s truth, Bánk bán’s world and Petur’s truth – and these two sides have been straining against each other for more than a thousand years now.
And as our geopolitical situation is not likely to change – even though we sometimes like to joke that, instead of stopping here, we should have pressed onward at least until we reached the sea – the message of this opera will remain relevant for eternity, or at least as long as the Hungarian language is spoken, and the problems and questions that are raised in it and the answers that emerge from its dramatic and tragic conclusion will always be valid.
It would be very difficult to dispense justice, because it is a fact that Gertrud’s truth is also a truth: the Meranian way of living life. This too can be a valid story. The question is, to what extent is it suitable for us. And if it isn’t suitable, then what will be the result of this encounter? Does it mean that we should give up the form of existence and way of thinking that is more suitable for us? Should we conform to the other one or should we rebel? And this has been going on for a thousand years… even up to the present day. This is the reason why this opera is timely today and why I like both the stage play and the opera adaptation so much. This is the fourth time I’ve directed it, and I can’t help admiring the precision of the work and the fact of how it was possible to make it all work so well, in a really Shakespearean way, without being didactic, but at the level of personal stories.
The thoughts I’ve just formulated into words could have been presented on the stage in a pithy manner, but here the internal struggles of a great man develop into a beautiful drama of jealousy. A situation that is Hamlet-like at heart is complicated further by the presence of a seducer, and this is important symbolically: through Melinda, this other world tempts us to live life in a different way. So, the core is a Shakespearean play, which is accompanied by powerful and sometimes thoroughly moving music. Although it isn’t my role to provide musical analysis, I find Melinda and Bánk’s duet to be truly remarkable. In it, Erkel was able to capture something that was totally his own and not constructed on Italian or German models.
Attila Vidnyánszky