Giuseppe Verdi: IL TROVATORE Opera Premiere

Count di Luna – Bogdan Baciu
Leonora – Elena Stikhina
Azucena – Judit Kutasi
Manrico– Yusif Eyvazov
Ferrando – István Kovács
Ines – Melinda Heiter
Ruiz – Gergely Ujvári
Herald - András Decsi
Old Gypsy - Dániel Kelemen

Performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Choir.
Conducted by Péter Halász.
Directed and produced by Teodóra Bán.

At the heart of Il trovatore lie rebellion against oppression, revenge, passionate hatred, love, and betrayal. During the composition of the opera, Giuseppe Verdi was fascinated by the romantic atmosphere of the medieval world and the mysterious spirit of the gypsy camps. From this inspiration emerged the story of the enigmatic troubadour whose serenade ignites Leonora’s heart.

The plot of the opera takes place in Spain in the 1410s, during the civil conflict in which the Count of Urgel launched a war of succession against King Ferdinand I of Aragon, nephew of the late King Martin, who had been elected rather than inheriting the throne. In the city of Zaragoza, situated on the southern slopes of the Pyrenees and at the center of the Kingdom of Aragon, the royalist Count di Luna resides in the Aljafería Palace, while Leonora, lady-in-waiting to the queen, lives in the nearby Sargasto Palace. Manrico, the troubadour, comes from the mountains of Biscay and fights on the side of the Count of Urgel. Count di Luna and Manrico are therefore not only rivals in love, but also political enemies.

At the center of the drama stands Azucena, the gypsy woman, who silently entangles the destinies of the characters and passively drives the love triangle toward tragedy. Within her, the voice of compassion struggles against the ancient tradition of blood revenge that ultimately shapes the fate of all involved.

Yusif Eyvazov is a dramatic tenor, with a thriving international performing career. Additionally, he was recently appointed as the Director of the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, in his home country, where he also holds the title of “People’s Artist of Azerbaijan.”

Yusif performs regularly on the stages of all of the world’s most prestigious opera houses including the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Vienna State Opera, Teatro Real in Madrid, Berlin State Opera, Royal Opera House in London, Paris National Opera, Liceu Opera Barcelona and The Metropolitan Opera, among others. The unique sound of his voice, described as “metallic, stentorian and markedly Italianate” (L.A. Times), and an outstanding stage presence have allowed him to combine an active opera career with frequent concert performances. Yusif has appeared on numerous recordings for Deutsche Grammophon including a complete recording of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” live from the Salzburg Festival and with soprano Anna Netrebko on the cross-over album Romanza.

Highlights of the 2025/2026 season include La forza del destino at the Zurich Opernhaus, concert in Istanbul,Turandot at London Royal Opera House, Tosca at the Opera National de Paris and at the Royal Opera in Muscat, as well as the role of Radames in Aida at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, Il Trovatore at the Teatro Real in Madrid and at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste.

Yusif Eyvazov opened his 2024-25 season performing Rodolfo (La Boheme) at Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Calaf (Turandot) in Budapest and Seoul. At the beginning of the year 2025 he performed Otello in Palermo at the Teatro Massimo. He then sang the role of Mario Cavardossi in Tosca at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and concerts in Sofia, Budapest, Paris, Moscow and Vienna. Yusif Eyvazov sang Alfredo in La Traviata at the Royal Opera House Muscat and Manrico (Il Trovatore) at the Staatsoper Berlin. He appeared in Pique Dame at the Wiener Staatsoper, that was highly praised by critics, and Aida at the Arena di Verona Opera Festival. Among others he performed also in Orange, in concert in Berlin, in Thurn and Taxis Schlossfestspiel, in Ljubljana Festival and in Torre del Lago in Puccini Opera Festival.

"Leonora's aria is one of my favourites. It brought me two audience awards in competitions!"

Elena Stikhina is widely regarded as one of the leading dramatic sopranos of her generation. Renowned for her exceptional vocal power and compelling stage presence, she has become one of the most sought-after guest artists at the world's foremost opera houses. In 2017, she made her debut at the Mariinsky Theatre as Salome, after which she joined the company's roster of soloists. Her acclaimed interpretation of the role earned her both the Onegin Russian Opera Prize and St. Petersburg's prestigious Golden Sofit Theatre Award.

Her international breakthrough followed a series of major competition successes. In 2014, she won First Prize at the Competizione dell'Opera in Linz, and in 2016 she received both the Audience Prize and the CulturArte Prize at the Operalia Plácido Domingo Competition. Since then, she has appeared regularly on the stages of the world's leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, the Opéra National de Paris, the Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, the Opernhaus Zürich, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, and the Salzburg Festival.

Her extensive repertoire includes the title roles in Tosca, Aida, Salome, Norma, Medea, and Manon Lescaut, as well as Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly), Senta (Der fliegende Holländer), Leonora (Il trovatore and La forza del destino), Elisabetta (Don Carlo), Tatiana (Eugene Onegin), Amelia (Un ballo in maschera), and Joan of Arc (The Maid of Orleans).

The 2025/26 season features a remarkable series of engagements. She performs the title role in Tosca at Dutch National Opera, the Vienna State Opera, and the Opéra National de Paris; Salome at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Vienna State Opera; Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly at Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Metropolitan Opera; and also appears in The Maid of Orleans, Don Carlo, Un ballo in maschera, and Norma.

During the summer of 2026, Elena Stikhina continues her busy international schedule with performances as Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at Opernhaus Zürich, followed by the same production at the Edinburgh International Festival. She performs Benjamin Britten's monumental War Requiem at the Philharmonie de Paris, presents a solo recital at the Museum Moderner Kunst Kärnten, appears as the title heroine in Verdi's Aida at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, sings the title role in Bellini's Norma at the Bavarian State Opera, and concludes the summer as Cio-Cio-San at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago.

Elena Stikhina is celebrated for her extraordinary vocal brilliance, impeccable technique, and profound dramatic artistry, qualities that have established her as one of the most distinguished and admired sopranos on today's international opera stage.

OperaWire – Il trovatore, Deutsche Oper Berlin (2024)"Elena Stikhina's Leonora combined vocal opulence with dramatic conviction. Her gleaming upper register and seemingly effortless phrasing made every entrance memorable."

Bachtrack –

"Stikhina possesses exactly the kind of sumptuous spinto voice Verdi's Leonora requires, combining lyrical warmth with thrilling dramatic power."

With her “deeper, dark” (Jenny Camilleri/ Bachtrack) voice is one of the most up-and-coming singers in her repertoire and leads critics to predict that she “will be the Verdi mezzo of the next years” (Maximilian Maier / BR Klassik).

Judit Kutasi, a Romanian-Hungarian mezzo-soprano, is one of the outstanding voices in her field. Her distinctive profile is characterized by powerful interpretations of Verdi and Wagner roles.

The 2025/26 season is marked by several impressive highlights for her: she starts the season with her return to the Paris Opera, where she performs the role of Amneris in Verdi’s Aida. She then takes on the role of Ortrud in Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Hungarian State Opera. At the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège, she sings Pauline in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades before returning to the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Amneris. The season concludes with her guest performances as Azucena in Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and at the Margaret Island Festival in Budapest. On the concert stage, she can be heard performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at both the Enescu International Festival and with the Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid (ORCAM) in the Spanish capital. She also sings Bruckner’s Te Deum with the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra in Bucharest.

Judit Kutasi performs regularly in major international opera houses and concert halls. Following her 2024 debut in Verdi’s La Forza del Destino at the Metropolitan Opera, she returned to New York to sing Amneris under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The New Year’s Eve premiere of Michael Mayer’s spectacular new staging of Aida became part of the “Met’s Live in HD” series and was shown in movie theatres across the globe. In San Francisco, Kutasi sang Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera and portrayed Ortrud in the new Lohengrin production under the baton of Eun Sun Kim.

Her performances in San Francisco were also featured at the heart of the documentary “Eun Sun Kim: A Journey into Lohengrin” (produced by Elena Park, Lumahai Productions), which was nominated for the 2025 Northern California Emmy Awards. A further media highlight was her television debut in the BBC documentary “Joanna Lumley’s Danube: Europe’s Mightiest River” (Episode 2: Slovakia and Hungary), which presented Kutasi in an interview and in an Aida performance at the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest.

Other milestones of Kutasi’s opera career include the role of Erda in the new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold under the musical direction of Sir Donald Runnicles at the Deutsche Oper, as well as spectacular performances as Amneris, both at the Arena di Verona and the
Bayerische Staatsoper under Maestro Zubin Mehta, and the role of Azucena in Il Trovatore at the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Opéra National de Paris. With great success, Judit Kutasi joined Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov in Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier at Teatro alla Scala Milano in performances led by Maestro Riccardo Chailly, subsequently released by the theater on DVD in a co-production with CMajor.

As a sought-after artist on the concert stage, Judit Kutasi sang Federica in Verdi’s Luisa Miller (CD production by BR Klassik) together with the Munich Radio Orchestra under the baton of Ivan Repušic. At the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, she sang Bruckner’s Te Deum and performed in the opera house’s New Year’s Concert in 2019. She also sang Verdi’s Requiem under Antonio Pappano in Salzburg and Stravinsky’s Les Noces under Kent Nagano at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.

Judit Kutasi was born in Timisoara, Romania. She studied voice, piano and cello at the Colegiul Național de Artă “Ion Vidu” and continued her studies at the University of Oradea and the Music Academy Gheorghe Dima in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, graduating with a master’s degree. From 2013 to 2016, she was part of the Zurich Opera—first in the International Opera Studio, then as an ensemble member. Judit Kutasi was a Walter Sandvoss Fellow of the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2016/17 and has been a celebrated guest artist there ever since.

The Romanian baritone Bogdan Baciu studied at the Music Academy “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. He has won numerous prizes at international competitions. In 2011/12 he became a member of the Opera Studio of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Dusseldorf, and he has been a member of the singers ensemble since 2012/13. His repertoire includes roles such as Mozart’s Papageno (“The Magic Flute”) and Don Giovanni, Rossini’s Figaro (“Il barbiere di Siviglia”) and Dandini (“La Cenerentola”), Donizetti’s Dottore Malatesta (“Don Pasquale”) and Enrico (“Lucia di Lammermoor”), Verdi’s Renato (“Ballo in maschera”), Ford (“Falstaff”) and Marquis Posa (“Don Carlo”), Wagner’s Gunther (“Götterdämmerung”) and Heerrufer (“Lohengrin”), Puccini’s Marcello (“La Bohème”), Sharpless (“Madama Butterfly”) and Ping (“Turandot”) as well as Escamillo (Bizet “Carmen”), Gounod’s Mercutio (“Roméo et Juliette”), Valentin (“Faust”), Tchaikovsky’s Onegin (“Evgeny Onegin”) and Harlequin (Strauss “Ariadne auf Naxos”). Guest performances have taken him to the opera houses in Cluj- Napoca, Iași, Bucharest, Timisoara, Strasbourg, Vilnius, Palermo, Bergamo, Moscow, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt. In July 2019 he sang Geisterbote (Strauss “Die Frau ohne Schatten”) at the Verbier Festival. In April 2020 he should have made his debut as Silvio (Leoncavallo “Pagliacci” ) at the Royal Opera House in London, but this engagement had to be canceled due to Corona. In 2020 he made his debut at the “Donizetti Festival” in Bergamo with the piece “Marino Faliero” conducted by Riccardo Frizza. 2021 brings him his debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Marchese di Posa in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” and also the Teatro Massimo di Palermo debut as Escamillo in Bizet’s masterpiece “Carmen”. In the 2021-2022 season he makes two more role debuts, Il conte di Luna from Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the Romanian National Opera Timisoara and Germont from Verdi’s La Traviata at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf, role that he sings as well at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In July 2022, he made his debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, with the role Der Geisterbote from “Die Frau ohne Schatten” by R.Strauss. The season 2022- 2023 finds him singing Enrico from “Lucia di Lammermoor” , Ford from “Falstaff” and Herode from Massenet’s “Herodiade” at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Dusseldorf. In the same season, he makes his long-awaited debut at the Royal Opera House London with Marcello from Puccini’s “La Boheme”, as well as his debut at the Baden-Baden Festspiele with the role Geisterbote from “Die Frau ohne Schatten”. In the 2023-2024 season, he makes his debut in Dusseldorf with the role of Amfortas in R. Wagner’s masterpiece, “Parsifal”. His roles for the 2025/26 season include Count di Luna (Verdi's “Il trovatore”), Amfortas (Wagner's “Parsifal”), Figaro (Mozart's “Le nozze di Figaro”), and Escamillo (Bizet's “Carmen”).

Péter Halász is the principal guest conductor of the Hungarian State Opera. Having fulfilled this role since the 2023/24 season, he has already won acclaim for the first-ever performance of Dvorak’s Rusalka at the State Opera and for the Hungarian premiere of Puccini’s Turandot with Luciano Berio’s finale. On top of this, in the past two seasons he has conducted revivals of Wagner’s Parsifal, Verdi’s Don Carlo, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Bizet’s Carmen and Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Arabella.

In the 2025/26 season, in addition to the premiere of Beethoven’s Fidelio Péter is conducting Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Verdi’s Rigoletto and Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri at the Hungarian State Opera.

Between 2021 and 2024, Péter was engaged as first Kapellmeister at Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Düsseldorf, and he still frequently appears there as a guest conductor.

In the 2022/23 season, Péter conducted the Düsseldorf premiere of Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans, which enjoyed great acclaim from both critics and audiences alike.

Other works Péter conducted during his tenure at Deutsche Oper am Rhein included Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Puccini’s Tosca and Madama Butterfly, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Verdi’s La traviata.

Born in Budapest, after piano studies, Péter learned composition at the Bartók Conservatory. Continuing his education at Vienna’s Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, he studied conducting under Professor Leopold Hager and the years he spent there still define his taste and musical aesthetic. After travelling to Lucerne to take master classes from Bernard Haitink, he assisted Ádám Fischer on several occasions.

From 2011, he was the principal conductor and deputy music director of Sinfonieorchester Aachen and Theater Aachen for two seasons. During this time, he led the premieres of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Superflumina, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera and Poulenc’s La voix humaine and Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.

As music director of the Hungarian State Opera from 2013 to 2016, Péter was responsible for many successful premieres. The first of these was Verdi’s Falstaff, timed to coincide with the two hundredth anniversary of the composer’s birth. A milestone in Hungarian operatic life was when he premiered the first ever domestic performance of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, which enjoyed a fantastic reception from critics and audiences alike and has been one of the Hungarian State Opera’s most prominent productions ever since. In collaboration with Academy Award-winning director Jiri Menzel, Péter presented Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte featuring the cream of young Hungarian singers in the principal roles. In the same season he also conducted Weber’s Der Freischütz. 2015 saw the inception of a brand-new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle with Das Rheingold, which was followed by Die Walküre in 2016, and Siegfried in 2017.

It was at the invitation of Ádám Fischer that Péter made his debut at the Hungarian State Opera with Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia in 2010. Since then, he has regularly led repertoire performances in Budapest, having conducted upwards of 30 different works over more than 250 performances. In 2016, he was the conductor for Plácido Domingo’s gala concert, which was the great tenor’s first ever performance at the Hungarian State Opera, and he has also conducted gala concerts and performances by such world-famous singers as Angela Gheorghiu, Ailyn Perez, Anja Kampe, Linda Watson, Vesselina Kassarova, Gregory Kunde, Piotr Beczala, Yusif Eyvazov, Ambrogio Maestri, Tomasz Konieczny and Feruccio Furlanetto.

In 2015, Péter was invited to join Staatsoper Hamburg, where he made his debut with Puccini’s Manon Lescaut

In 2021, he led the premiere of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Theater Bern, and in 2022 he was the conductor for the premiere of Rossini’s Cenerentola at the Latvian National Opera. In 2024, he led the Irish National Symphony Orchestra in their performance of William Wallace’s grand romantic opera Lurline.

In 2024, Péter took the podium at the Hungarian State Opera for the Solti Accademia’s gala concert. Featuring Hera Park, Aigul Akhmetshina, Freddie De Tommaso and Paul Grant, the event was streamed live by the Deutsche Grammophon Stage + platform, where the recording can still be enjoyed.

Following a personal invitation from Zoltán Kocsis, Péter conducted the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time in 2016, and he has also frequently led concerts by many other leading Hungarian symphony orchestras.

In 2019, he worked as a guest professor at the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation’s Master Course for Conductors at the invitation of Peter Eötvös himself.

In the 2023/24 season, he held courses on conducting opera as a visiting professor at Budapest’s Liszt Academy of Music, and at the invitation of Éva Marton, he conducted both the final and the gala concert of the Academy’s Fifth Éva Marton International Singing Competition.

In 2017, he was awarded the Golden Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic.