Fra Diavolo Presented by Liszt Academy

A penniless girl. A young soldier who is also down on his luck. A wealthy old man, whom the girl’s father would like to snare as a son-in-law, an inn, a highwayman and two English travellers. These are the ingredients for Auber’s Fra Diavolo, one of the most popular light musical stage works of the 19th century. The most sought-after, celebrated librettist of the age, Eugène Scribe, mixed in everything a great opéra comique (generally, but not necessarily a musical work with light topic interspersed with prose dialogues) needed for success: the libretto is awash with self-interest, theft, misunderstandings in love and a happy end, in other words, the whole lot. The work was first staged in Paris in 1830 as a production of Opéra-Comique and Théâtre Feydeau. Students of the Liszt Academy Department of Vocal and Opera Studies are staging this production as their way of greeting the 80-year-old Ádám Medveczky and the 90-year-old Miklós Szinetár.