Príma Donnák + 1 Hős: TOKODY ILONA

Length of the performance: 1 hour 20 minutes, without intermission.

The 1972 Kodály Singing Competition was won by Ilona Tokody, a music academician previously unknown to the general public. Her path led her straight to the Opera House, where in the summer of 1977 she scored her first final success as the Liù in Turandot. Her career was founded by masters such as András Mikó and Lamberto Gardelli. Ilona Tokody's talent was not hidden from the world, and her first international career was at the Vienna State Opera, and from the early 1980s there was hardly an opera house in the world where she did not make a guest appearance. She is perhaps the only soprano to have been the Mimì of the Three Tenors. The backbone of her repertoire is the heroines of Puccini and Verdi. She has always been faithful to her hometown of Szeged and the Opera House. In 2017, OPERA published a book about Tokody, written by Zsuzsanna Réfi, and in 2023, in honour of her 70th birthday, she created a USB stick. His song recital is a tribute to one of the most influential composers of his career: it pays tribute to the work of Puccini on the 100th anniversary of his death.

With Ilona Tokody.

Kálmán Szennai on piano