Russia in spotlight of Budapest Spring Festival

Russian culture will be in the spotlight of this year's Budapest Spring Festival, which will feature classical music concerts, opera, dance and theatre performances and jazz shows between April 5 and 22, the chief of the organisers said on Friday. The festival will open in a highlight event with a performance of Mussorgsky's second and last completed opera Khovanshchina in the Palace of Arts (Mupa). It will be shown in the original form with Russian singers and the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Choir and Children's Choir together with the Honved Male Choir, Csaba Kael said. Another highlight event will be a concert performance of Tchaikovsky's last opera, Iolanta, by St Petersburg's Mariinsky Orchestra with renowned conductor Valery Gergiev in Mupa on April 20, he said.