Opening concert

Iván Fischer made his dream come true when he founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 1983 together with Zoltán Kocsis. From the very beginning, the ambition of the ensemble has been to share music of the highest quality and to serve the community in the most diverse ways. The Budapest Festival Orchestra is rated among the top ten orchestras in the world. The orchestra regularly performs at the most important concert venues of the international music scene, including Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center in New York, the Musikverein in Vienna and the Royal Albert Hall and Barbican Centre in London. They have repeatedly been invited to perform at international festivals such as the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Salzburg Festival and the Edinburgh International Festival. The Budapest Festival Orchestra has won two Gramophone Awards. It was nominated for a Grammy in 2013 for its recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and won the Diapason d’Or and the Italian Toblacher Komponierhäuschen prize for its recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in 2014. The Budapest Festival Orchestra received the Association of Music Critics of Argentina’s award for Best Foreign Symphony Orchestra in 2016. The Budapest Festival Orchestra’s innovative concerts, such as the Autism-friendly Cocoa Concerts, Surprise Concerts, and musical marathons, are well known around the world. The Midnight Music concerts attract young adults, while the Dancing on the Square project integrates disadvantaged children. The orchestra promotes free Community Weeks and co-produces the Bridging Europe festival with Müpa Budapest.

Iván Fischer is the founder and Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. He is an honorary conductor of Berlin’s Konzerthaus and Konzerthausorchester. In recent years he has also gained a reputation as a composer, he has directed a number of successful opera productions, and, in 2018, founded the Vicenza Opera Festival. The Berlin Philharmonic have played more than ten times under Fischer’s baton, and he also spends two weeks every year with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He is a frequent guest of the leading symphony orchestras in the US as well. As Music Director, he has led the Kent Opera and the Opéra National de Lyon, and was Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Many of his recordings have been awarded prestigious international prizes. Fischer is a founder of the Hungarian Mahler Society and Patron of the British Kodály Academy, and is an honorary citizen of Budapest. Iván Fischer has received many prestigious Hungarian and international awards and prizes, just a few examples: the government of the French Republic made him Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, proclaiming him a Knight of the Order of Art and Literature, in 2006, he was honoured with the Kossuth Prize, Hungary’s most prestigious arts award, in 2011, he received the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award, Hungary’s Prima Primissima Prize and the Dutch Ovatie Prize. In 2013, he was granted Honorary Membership to the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Most recent appearances of Chilean-Swedish mezzo soprano Luciana Mancini include Messaggera in Monteverdi’s Orfeo with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer in Vicenza, Budapest and Geneva, La Musica/Messaggera/Proserpina in Orfeo for Nationale Reisopera, Serse in Handel’s Serse at Theater Bonn, Bach’s Messe in h-moll at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg with Collegium 1704 and Vaclav Luks, New Year’s concerts with the Oslo Philharmonic, Berio’s Folk Songs with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Zaida in Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia at De Nationale Opera Amsterdam, Amastre in Handel’s Serse at Theater an der Wien under Jean-Christophe Spinosi, concerts with Ensemble Pygmalion and Raphaël Pichon at the Festivals Chaise-Dieu and Sablé, Handel’s Messiah with the Orchestra of the 18th Century as well as with the Melbourne and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, Bach’s Matthäus Passion with the Residentie Orkest, Galatea in Handel’s Acis, Galatea e Polifemo at the Händelfestspiele Halle and the title role in Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires at Theater Bonn (released on CD by Capriccio). Elsewhere, she has performed with conductors such as René Jacobs, Pablo Heras-Casado, Juanjo Mena, Stefan Soltesz and Leonardo García Alarcon in houses including Teatro Real Madrid, Staatsoper Berlin, Opéra Comique in Paris, the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the Drottningholm Festival, the Bergen Philharmonic and the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.