Bartok: Bluebeard's Castle
János Vajda: Mario and the Musician

OPERA
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2018
7:30 PM

Hungarian State Opera
David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$10-$119
https://davidhkochtheater.com/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=5769

You'll have to decide for yourself whether you're willing to support a cultural showpiece of a proto-fascist regime (touring now, in fact, because its beautiful old opera house is closed for renovations lavished upon it by the regime).  If you are, this double-header of very fine-to-great Hungarian operas of the last century is the clear pick of the Hungarian State Opera's visit, from this List's perspective (and it's even kind of anti-fascist, as we'll see).  Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle you know:  one of the peaks of 20th Century opera.  It will be good, though, to hear it sung entirely by native speakers of this distinctive and linguistically remote language.  János Vajda's piece maybe you don't know.  Vajda was one of those late-20th Century composers who started out all dodecaphonic but then reconciled with tonality.  His neotonal works -- very much including this one -- are quite appealing.  It's based on a good Thomas Mann short story about, of all things, mass suggestibility leading to mass extremism; I'm not going to make any remarks.  (Does Orbán know they're doing this?)

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Let's keep it Old World and go back to The Leopard at Des Artistes for very good Southern Italian in opulent surroundings -- in a space that was, of course, long occupied by a restaurant run by a great Hungarian restaurateur.  As always, I'll tell you to order the paccheri with "Genovese" sauce and to hope they're offering their famous but now off-menu meatloaf as a special.