Four stars - Beliczai Balázs, Felméri Péter, Fülöp Viktor, Kőhalmi Zoltán, mv: Lencz Máté

There are evenings when our Opera House cannot perform because rehearsals are ongoing on stage until the evening. There are audience members who can only afford to hear their favourite pieces with a discount. And there are works that, although very popular, cannot be staged every season due to the congestion of productions.

While the Fountain of Tears bubbles before him, Giray, khan of the Tatars, is lost in brooding. Just as the flow from the marble fount cannot be exhausted, his own sorrow will never diminish, either. The story of the Fountain of Bakhchisarai is set in motion by a romance recounting the reason for the khan's gloom.

A century ago, the world first encountered this remarkable opus, a work that soon became one of the cornerstones of twentieth-century musical innovation. Premiered in 1926, the singspiel is a milestone in Hungarian music history: its composer, Zoltán Kodály, fulfilled his aspiration to elevate Hungarian folk song of ancient origin to the same status as classical music, by virtue of its equivalent values, placing it on the stage of the nation’s Opera House.