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Considered Hungary's national opera, Ferenc Erkel's Bánk bán rarely travels beyond its borders, but is given a rousing performance by the Hungarian State Opera. 

The Hungarian State Opera's first New York tour featured an opera of forbidden love set in the Biblical Times by Karl Goldmark, and was a rare treat for the New York audience.

This concert, with a running time of about two hours, was a lovely dip in the Rhine without the usual four-to-five hour Wagnerian full immersion.

The big heart and generous melodies of Ferenc Erkel's fine opera shine through in difficult circumstances in Atilla Vidnyánszky semi-abstract new staging at the Erkel Theatre.

The score of Goldmark's opera is filled with lovely orchestral surprises, in addition to stunning arias, but is often filled with an abundance of slow tempos.

With a convoluted production and uneven cast, Tamás Pál in the pit and Klára Kolonits as Erzsébet Szilágyi prove to be the highlights of the performance of this Erkel classic.

This double cast, nine-day revival of Vadim Milkov's staging of Pique Dame offers a relatively straight reading of Tchaikovsky's opera about the obsessive Pushkin-based character Herman. Embracing the opera's choral and dance passages, spectacle and pageantry are paramount; the drama's surreal and more nuanced dimensions could have been better profiled.