Valuska

Valuska is the first of his thirteen operas that Peter Eötvös wrote in Hungarian. Together with his librettist Mari Mezei, he previously sounded out more than 40 stories and films and finally found his material in László Krasznahorkai's novel Melancholy of Resistance. The book came out in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell and the old Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe collapsed. The film The Werckmeister Harmonies (Werckmeister harmóniák) by Hungarian director Béla Tarr (2000) is based on the same story.

About the opera's content: The inhabitants of a small town are terrified by increasing signs of an impending catastrophe and the growing piles of uncollected rubbish on the streets. The confusion is further exacerbated by the late-night arrival of a travelling circus boasting the world’s largest taxidermied giant whale and the presence of an expanding crowd of strangers waiting in silence. The small circus troupe – at first seeming to consist only of the owner, who calls himself “the director”, and his assistant – also turns out to include a mysterious deformed dwarf who calls himself Prince.

At the centre of events is the innocent and well-meaning half-wit János Valuska (Valushka), who delivers newspapers for the post office. Naively fascinated by the majestic order of the universe, he enthusiastically relates the incredible wonders he has glimpsed to the congregation of apathetic workers who frequent the local pub.

Every day Valuska brings lunch to the retired Professor, for whom he also runs other errands with tender care and touching delicacy.

The Professor’s estranged wife, Ms. Tünde, the mayor of the city, throws herself into organising the “A Tidy Yard, An Orderly House” movement she has launched. To increase her influence, she functionalizes the circus, whose star, the demonic dwarf Prince, shall incite the angry barbarian mob to engage in destruction.

The mayhem begins with relentless acts of looting, arson and murder committed solely for their own sake. Swept up in this crowd as it spreads senseless devastation everywhere is Valuska, who involuntarily becomes a member of the violent throng.

The chaos is eventually stopped by the military, but the restoration of order is followed by a new and more sophisticated form of terror, when the town comes under the control of a deceitful political regime led by Ms Tünde.

After Valuska is captured in a manhunt, he is only released when Ms Tünde comes to his defence, declaring him a fool. The Professor comes every day to visit Valuska in the mental asylum where he has been committed to, only to find each time that his former helper refuses to utter a single word, having lost both the faith in the cosmic order and his belief in the world’s magic.

Kinga Keszthelyi, Mari Mezei 2022

“Valuska, the pure-hearted young man, becomes a victim of a manipulative society in the shadow of a whale”. (Peter Eötvös)