Dome 016 - Csontváry: Levante

Audio-visual adaptation of Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka's paintings in the spirit of the solar journey, from Naples to Jerusalem.

View or vision? Many people have asked this question after seeing Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka’s paintings. The paintings of this artist, considered a unique and eccentric figure in the history of Hungarian art, leave no one indifferent. Dreams awakened by landscapes he had never seen before, and the depiction of reality directed towards the sky, of living nature tending towards surrealism, are one of the keys to his art. He was looking for the journey of the sun, the great motif and the mystic, and he believed that he could only find it in the East, in the lands of the Levant. At the turn of the 20th century, he made several trips to the provinces east of Italy, following the line of the increasingly popular Asian tourist routes.

Our musical journey takes us on an itinerary based on four scenes and twelve paintings, from the city of Castellammare in the Bay of Naples, through Athens and then Jerusalem, to the 6,000-year-old cedar of Baalbek. The artist's well-known and lesser-known paintings are brilliantly illustrated with compositions written and performed by renowned Hungarian and foreign performers, linked to each location. A canzone by the Italian Faraualla and Fratelli Mancuso, followed by a popular rebetiko by Veronika Varga and the Esperia band, then Jordi Savall and the Faran Ensemble evoke Jerusalem, and finally the ethereal music of Dhafer Youssef and Ádám Kalamár closes the round.

Csontváry's monumental paintings, his masterly brushwork, his colours glowing with the power of the soul from an unmarkable, unlocatable source of light, now enchant the visitor in the Sound Dome of the Hungarian House of Music, who, following the traveller who has been on an adventure for 100 years, can board a plane, a boat or a train to answer the question: is the master's oeuvre a vision or a spectacle?

Running time: 25 minutes

Age rating:
This performance is not recommended for children under the age of 3.

The screening is in Hungarian, which may affect your experience.