Gurre-Lieder (Songs of Gurre)

Arnold Schönberg: Gurre-Lieder

Running time 2 hours 30 minutes including one interval 
Language German, Surtitle Hungarian and English 

In 2025, a large-scale work was performed for the first time by the Hungarian State Opera at the Erkel Theatre, a piece that Hungarian musicians had previously performed only once before, in 1998, under the direction of Zoltán Kocsis. Arnold Schönberg’s dramatic cantata Gurre-Lieder is the imposing culmination of post-Romanticism and also a major turning point in the composer’s own career. This truly unusual and exceptional score, which uniquely blends the influences of Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Mahler, is the largest-scale work by the leading figure of the Second Viennese School. Alongside Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 and Britten’s War Requiem, it has become one of the most artistically demanding works in the classical repertoire, requiring the greatest number of performers, now to be presented at the Opera House.

Conductor: Gergely Dubóczky