Sándor Szokolay

condition (records/box): NM / EX

Insert included.

The subject matter was not accidental. When Sándor Szokolay chose to base his first opera on Federico García Lorca's Blood Wedding - the Spanish playwright's most performed tragedy, set among Andalusian peasants, saturated with violence and desire - he was reaching for something that had no local operatic tradition behind it. Hungarian opera had produced Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle and Kodály's Háry János; the language of verismo was foreign to it. Lorca's play, translated into Hungarian by the poet Gyula Illyés, gave Szokolay the extreme emotional and dramatic stakes he needed, and a text whose folk-rooted imagery had a direct resonance with his own training in Hungarian folk music.

Vérnász, completed in 1964 and premiered by the Hungarian State Opera, was an immediate success. Its musical language is eclectic - modernist technique alongside writing in the manner of Stravinsky, Britten, and Tippett, Hungarian folk inflection weaving through the vocal lines - but the dramatic integration is complete, and the score's capacity to hold extreme states together without resolving them into easy sentiment earned it the Kossuth Prize in 1966. It toured internationally, including the State Opera's visit to Edinburgh, and was taken on as the defining work of Szokolay's career - though he went on to compose six more operas, including settings of Hamlet and Samson.

Recorded by the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra and Chorus under conductor András Kórodi, with a cast led by Erzsébet Komlóssy and Erzsébet Házy. Issued in a 2LP box with a 60-page booklet including the libretto in Hungarian and French with additional translations in German, English, and Russian. Original Qualiton pressing.