The 2006 Budapest Spring Festival features more than 6,000 performers, and many of the events are dedicated to the double anniversary of Mozart?s and Bartók?s birthdays. Mozart?s complete string quartets will be performed over six evenings, and the Hungarian State Opera will stage three of Bartók?s operas during the two-week festival. At the festival?s closing concert on April 2, the UK?s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will open their programme with Mozart?s Overture to the Marriage of Figaro.
At the ceremony at Budapest?s Ethnographic Museum to mark the festival?s start, Culture Minister András Bozóki said ?culture is not something which has to be brought up the rear, it is not something which can be measured up with competitiveness or the economy. Without culture, cultured people and intellectual capital, there would be neither competitiveness nor economic development.?
The ceremony was also attended by President of Hungary Laszló Sólyom and Budapest Mayor Gábor Demszky.
?The demand for such festivals is a sign that people have a desire to experience live performance, not just mechanical sounds or songs preserved on a disc, but real people, performances and true acoustic sound,? Sólyom said.
Demszky said, ?The success of the Spring Festival is a success too for cultural tourism. Its popularity and renown prove that Budapest is the genuine article, a multicultural world city which will hopefully become the cultural centre of the entire Central European region.?
In addition to opera, operetta, ballet, klezmer and Gypsy music, the Budapest Spring Festival will feature several exhibitions and a mini festivals of alternative arts on its last three days.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
