The Symphony Orchestra of India’s Autumn 2022 Season Kicks Off This Week 

On September 16th, The Symphony Orchestra of India will begin its Autumn 2022 season at Mumbai’s National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA). The month-long stint at the NCPA will include four symphonic concerts, four recitals and three performances of an opera. Audiences will be treated to Beethoven symphonies as well as ballet music by Prokofiev and Broadway compositions by Leonard Bernstein.  

A host of international artists such as conductors Alpesh Chauhan and Richard Farnes, pianists Benjamin Grosvenor, Pavel Kolesnikov and Jean-Frédéric Neuberger, cellist Henri Demarquette, violinist Sayaka Shoji and young French horn player Ben Goldscheider are set to feature at the shows.  

Also, one of the big draws for the event is a performance of Austrian composer Johann Strauss II’s operetta Die Fledermaus, presented in collaboration with the Hungarian State Opera. We caught up with the Deputy General Director of the Hungarian State Opera, Dr. Virág Főző, and discussed how the collaboration with the Symphony Orchestra of India came about, what folks can expect from the shows and more. Read excerpts: 

How did this collaboration with the Symphony Orchestra of India and the Hungarian State Opera happen? 

About five years ago, there was a big opera conference in China, in Beijing, and there the General Director of the Hungarian Opera met with the chairman of the NCPA, Mr. [Khushroo] Suntook. They started talking about this collaboration, and decided that it is a very good idea. Just before the COVID pandemic situation in January 2020, we came here to Mumba with the General Director, and we started to decide the main point of the collaboration. Unfortunately, we had to cancel [the plan] because of COVID, but we are very happy that this October we can do it.  

What is it like putting this entire production together? 

Along with the Symphony Orchestra of India, from the Hungarian State Opera orchestra, there will be about 15 musicians coming and the Hungarian conductor. They will rehearse together, and they will practice together for about a week or 10 days. 

What can the Indian audience expect from the upcoming opera shows? 

So, we’ve chosen a popular piece [Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus] because when anyone hears this word ‘opera,’ they are scared because they think it is something very dramatic, very hard, very sad. So, we want to show a funny, easy, lovely and sweet piece, which everybody will like, and which is useful to understand what is the ‘opera’ — that’s why we chose this piece. We hope the audience will love it. We performed this piece four years ago in Japan and they loved it as well, so this can be popular in Mumbai as well. 

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