Under the title Integration & Inclusion, Opera Europa, which operates as the continent's opera umbrella organization, has announced its autumn conference, which will be hosted by the Hungarian State Opera and the Eiffel Art Studios between 20 and 22 October 2022. The event, with the participation of nearly 200 representatives from almost 100 organizations from 26 countries, offers professional programmes for representatives of education, recruitment and audience training, human resources, and technical and production fields, some of which can also be followed on the organization's YouTube channel.
The three-day conference will discuss, among other things, the role of opera in education, the promotion of the opera genre, the forms of training within companies, and the relationship between politics and culture. An important element of the conference promises to be various forums promoting integration, as well as an HR forum, and the technical and a meeting of production specialists is also part of the varied programme. Representatives from the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Bavarian and Vienna State Operas, London's Royal Opera House, La Scala Milan, Paris' Opéra Comique and Theater an der Wien will participate in the series of events, as well as representatives from Brazil, Chile, Israel, Ukraine and New Zealand.
Following the opening speech of the general director Szilveszter Ókovács, artistic director András Almási-Tóth will take part in a round table discussion on the promotion of the genre of opera, while the functions and technical features of the Opera House, which was reopened this year after the renovation, and the Eiffel Art Studios opened last year, will be presented by Anka Józsa PhD, operations director. The participants of the conference can also see the performances currently running on the OPERA's repertoire, with special attention to Bán Bán - The Viceroy Bánk by Erkel, the international introduction of which is one of the important goals of the Budapest Opera, as well as MacMillan's ballet Mayerling to Liszt's music, which also has Hungarian aspects. The Valiant Johnny, a youth performance jointly produced by the OPERA Children's Chorus and the Hungarian National Ballet Institute, as well as Dido & Aeneas, the newest premiere of OPERA, announced for high school classes as part of the MVM OperAdventure, are also on offer.
Opera Europa, which is based in Brussels and brings together European opera houses and festivals, organizes conferences several times a year in cooperation with its partner institutions in order to promote the effective exchange of experience of representatives of theater specialties. Due to the closures caused by the pandemic, the international organization is organizing similar large-scale events for the first time this year after two and a half years. The last time the Opera Europa conference was hosted by the Hungarian State Opera was in October 2009, when the participants of the event discussed possible responses to the 2008 economic crisis.
Photo by Valter Berecz
