The Brooklyn Museum keeps its doors open late into the evening on one Saturday a month, hosting thematic programmes. Opera Unbound was organised as part of the Extremely Hungary Hungarian cultural season in New York and Washington.
"Our aim was to present this type of art in a friendly, accessible and enjoyable way to those who may never have heard an opera or been to an opera performance....and through this, we strived to bring Hungary to America," said curator Corinne Erni.
The evening started with a performance by the group Dallam-Dougou, which mixes Gypsy music with the songs of West Africa. Later, Hungarian DJ Yonderboi mixed famous opera music.
Throughout the evening, opera singers wandered the halls of the museum performing arias.
The Vertical Player Repertory performed excerpts from an adaptation of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge; and the fifth installment of Matthew Barney's Cremaster series, filmed in Budapest with Ursula Andress in the lead, was screened.
Media laboratory Kitchen Budapest brought an interactive programme to the museum that involved mobile telephones, opera loops and animation.
The American music historian Frank Oteri gave a multimedia presentation on the little known Hungarian-born opera composer Gabriel von Wayditch. Wayditch immigrated to America and settled in New York when he was a young man. He wrote 14 complete operas with Hungarian libretto in his lifetime, but none were ever performed. Wayditch died poor and unknown in 1969. His monumental operas have come to light only over the past several years, and his manuscripts have been purchased by Columbia University.
The Brooklyn-born author Arthur Phillips spoke to museum-goers about his book Prague, which is really a story about Budapest, published in 2002.
A variety of Hungarian culinary delicacies were also on offer at the museum.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
