Éva László (1923-1993) was one of the most impactful and popular artists at the Hungarian Opera from Cluj in the decades that followed the founding of the institution.
The monograph dedicated to this remarkable person will outline the most important moments of her life and career, portraying the journey of a talented young girl from Arad who enthusiastically learned to sing and had always dreamed of a career as a singer came to conquer the stage of the Hungarian Opera from Cluj where she evolved into one of the prominent personalities of the institution’s formative decades.
As it happened in the case of many of her fellow artists, Éva László’s life journey became intricately woven with the history of the history of the first decades of the Hungarian Opera from Cluj:
the institution’s start and the way it developed and subsequently built its repertory, moving from primarily Hungarian works –mainly operettas, comic operas, or light operas aligned with the folk opera tradition of the region – featuring masterpieces of universal opera literature, that also determined the development of her career.
Her artistic path unfolded and her repertoire was built in the same manner, the starting point being two characters from Kodály’s work presented on the musical stage from Cluj: the Örzse from János Háry and the Neighbor from The Spinning Room; then in relatively short period of just two decades, Éva László achieved the mezzo-sopranos’ dream, Carmen, as well as many other great dramatic mezzo-soprano roles:
Eboli, Ulrica, Amneris, Gertrudis, etc. She was also able to perform at a world premiere: she sang the Housewife in Salvatore Allegra’s opera, The Portrait.
This allowed her to showcase the diverse facets of the mezzo repertoire, seamlessly transitioning between major and minor roles.
Her life was intrinsically linked to the stage, with operas and their characters holding a central place. Interpreting, staging, and vocally presenting these characters became a natural process for her. As she candidly acknowledged, ”I had a vocal range of almost three octaves.
I could sing the high pitches as well as the low pitched roles without difficulty.” Perhaps the most memorable description of her voice and performances was articulated by László Fehérvári, in 1976, when he first referred to her as a ”voice millionaire”. He remarked, ”She ‘spread around’ the vocal material with such selfless generosity, she sounded so powerful, approaching the sparkling high notes with such superior confidence, and she hummed in the lower register of her voice reminding us here of the contralto, as only exceptional «sound millionaires» can afford. That’s why all her performances remained absolutely unforgettable for those who heard them once.”
She was the first one to portray Judith in The Blue-bearded Duke’s Castle (1965) on the stage of the Hungarian Opera from Cluj, a pivotal moment in her career, and with similar impact came the fact that during a highly successful tour of the Opera (in 1969), where audiences in Skopje witnessed Bartók’s heroine through her interpretation.
The following year, she captivated audiences in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Our volume also talks about her other guest performances abroad, one of the most memorable of which was her performance in Cairo, as a member of an international ”opera troupe”.
We have a great amount of information about this event, thanks to the conductor Antal Rónai, who offers a detailed account of the experience, and some details about Éva László were also preserved in the book. She performed individually at the Berlin Radio in the Berolina concert, and, especially in the years after her retirement, achieved success in the roles of Carmen, Azucena, and Amneris in Gdansk, Varna, Stara Zagora, Riga, Vilnius, Tbilisi, and Odessa.
The available data and statistics regarding her career also reveal valuable insights about the continuous effervescence of the opera life in Cluj at the time:
Éva László averaged around 35 performances a year, and presumably, this number of performances was also valid in the case of most members of the troupe. Two specific sets of ministatistics offer a comprehensive numerical overview of her operatic career: one meticulously compiled by Éva herself (the curriculum dated back to 1957 revealing that between 1949 and 1957 she graced the stage in an impressive 319 performances, excluding tours), and other thoughtfully put together by conductor Antal Rónai. In this latter one, the esteemed conductor summarized the performances he had directed in which Éva László had also participated: according to this, they were in a total of 247 performances in a decade and a half (1955-1970).
The monograph presents the most important moments of her career based on a fragment from an autobiographical essay (1983) that also includes important life events, respectively on two official, professional autobiographies in Romanian language (1957), on a number of documents and posters stored in the family heritage, and, of course, on press coverage of her performances.
In addition to the statements about Éva László’s performances from contemporary writings, we do sometimes cite some almost unbelievable moments from the past of the institution and the opera life in Cluj, simply because since the presentation of Carmen by the Hungarian Opera in Cluj, who has ever heard, for example, that an opera production ended in a real courtroom of justice? or about how the ”drizzle” projected on the tulle curtain by a rain machine could meet the audience’s approval to such an extent that it received a special round of applause every time it happened in the storm scene of Rigoletto?
We find it crucial to feature the carefully preserved photographs from Éva László’s personal collection, later safeguarded by her family.
A substantial portion of these images, captured by Dénes Szabó, the former head of the Fotofilm studio in Cluj, will be included. These photographs, with their captivating black and white simplicity and stylistic choices that mirror the aesthetics of the time, hold the power to convey aspects of the era’s development, atmosphere, and the overall brilliance of the performances.
In addition to written sources, we draw upon the recollections of some of her fellow artists (Magda Barabás Kásler, Annamária Albert, etc.). Nicolae Miu, a distinguished professor of medicine in Cluj and an enthusiastic admirer of Éva László, graciously shared his most significant impressions of her, specifically for this volume.
Naturally, the recollections of her son, George Roth, further enrich the career profile of the mezzo-soprano, often referred to as a ”voice millionaire”. In 1992, she stood among the first artists, alongside Antal Rónai and Albert Annamária, to receive the Eternal Member of the Hungarian Opera
Award at the 200th anniversary celebration of musical theatre in Cluj.
