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ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Born in 1935, Sandor Balassa's career as a composer has enriched contemporary Hungarian music composition since the end of the 60s (Requiem for Lajos Kass ak, 1969), with his outstanding successes. In view of his strength as a dramatist and his artistic maturity, his first opera - Outside the door - (after W Borchert), attracted attention in the second half of the seventies, as a prominent work of new Hungarian writing for opera. Following this, The Third Planet in one act, demonstrated the composer's social and moral commitment, emphasizing the vitally important question of the community and its responsibility in the survival of the natural and human world. Following the one-act opera, organised in oratorical tableaux, the composer's third opera Karl and Anna (1[zasłonięte]987-19) returned to the tragic drama of human life and history crossing each other's paths.
A gradual transformation has taken place in the composer's way of thinking and style in the last few decades. He has broken with the earlier free dodecaphonic structure and consequently, a commitment to a diatonic style comes across in his work, based on the European history of music and Hungarian folk traditions. In this free way of thinking, he recreates the musical characteristics of each of his works. The need to create a relationship with the contemporary audience has a primary role in his endeavours, and these were borne out by the successful performances of his most recent work, including the performance of Karl and Anna at the Opera House.
The composer's works have achieved significant results in orchestras, chamber music and vocal genres: many of his works were written for important commissions from abroad and appreciation for them, both at home and abroad, has been expressed in terms of professional and social honours.
SUMMARY OF THE OPERA FROM CONTENT AND MUSICAL VIEWPOINTS What fascinated the composer about the subject of Leonhard Frank's novella and his play above all, was the opportunity to articulate positive human emotions and love. With this decision, he consciously turned away from the contemporary attraction to the grotesque. Though the action takes place in the first world war, the composer does not place the emphasis on the historical situation. Despite this, the war scenes are essential from the dramatic point of view: it is in this atmosphere that the emotional "event" of the work, Karl and Anna's love, has its roots and it is from this that it unfolds. For the composer, the primary creative attraction was provided by the depiction of emotions developing under the pressure of tragedy: a typical dramatic situation of a wartime love triangle.
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