About 89 percent of the 62,000 tickets have been sold in advance, but tickets will also be available on site for some of the events, Zsófia Zimányi, the festival?s organiser, said in Budapest on Tuesday.
This year?s festival, running from 17 March to 2 April, will celebrate the 60th anniversary of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók?s death and the 250th anniversary of Mozart?s birth. But it will also feature a diverse host of other cultural offerings.
The Budapest Spring Festival will serve as a bridge to the Budapest Autumn Festival, and offer a glimpse of Budapest's diversity, culture, openness and spirit of renewal, said Budapest deputy-mayor János Schiffer. He noted that, for the first time, the Spring Festival would feature a festival within a festival: the Budapest Fringe Festival. During the last three days of the Spring Festival, the Fringe Festival will present debuts by amateur and alternative art groups. The Fringe Festival will feature 196 shows at 13 venues, and most of the programmes will be free.
The Fringe Festival?s best performers will have the opportunity to take part in later events to be put on by the Spring Festival?s organisers, Zimányi said.
One of the highlights on the Spring Festival?s programme will be a performance of Bartók?s Violin Concerto No. 1, Piano Concerto No. 1, and Concerto for Orchestra, featuring conductor Zoltán Kocsis, violinist Barnabás Kelemen and pianist Dezső Ránki. The concert will take place at the National Concert Hall at 19:30 on 24 March.
Three Bartók pieces will also be presented by the Hungarian National Opera on 31 March: the ballet "The Wooden Prince", choreographed by Sándor Román, the pantomime "The Miraculous Mandarin", staged by Jenő Lőcsei, and the opera "Bluebeard's Castle", produced by Miklós Szinetár.
"Aqua Toffana", a modern opera featuring music by Mozart and Hungarian theatre and musical talent Ágens, will premiere at the Palace of Arts on 29 March.
Also as part of the Spring Festival, the Museum of Fine Arts, with support from the Ministry of Culture and the state of Luxembourg, will present "Sigismundus - Rex et Imperator - Art and Culture in Sigmund of Luxembourg's Era" from 18 March to 18 June. The exhibit, dedicated to Sigmund of Luxembourg (1387-1437) and his contemporaries, will present 350 works of art from 110 great libraries and museums around the world. The exhibit will travel to Luxembourg in summer 2006.
Szentendre, just north of Budapest, along the Danube, will be the guest in the Spring Festival?s "Guest City" series this year. Szentendre plans a number of programmes for the festival, deputy-mayor Levente G. Radványi said. He added that, on 26 March, folk artists from Szentendre would demonstrate their crafts on a boat travelling down the Danube from Szentendre to Budapest. The Vujicsics Ensemble and the Szentendre Folk Dance Group will be performing in Budapest's Vörösmarty Square on the same day, just a short walk from the boat?s final stop.
