The Last Waltz is a one-act opera by Hungarian composer Iván Madarász, born in 1949. Madarász has had considerable experience as an opera composer, although his work is little known outside his home country, and his mastery of the form is evident throughout this piece. The mysteriously symbolic libretto has some elements in common with
Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle (characters behaving irrationally, and a mysterious door through which characters disappear, to their peril) but it makes considerably less sense as a narrative. That hardly matters, though, because the music is so thoroughly engaging: endlessly inventive, catchy without being banal, and with an irresistible expressive transparency. From a dramatic point of view, it may seldom be clear what exactly the four characters in this domestic story are doing, but the music provides an inescapable sense of direction that drives the opera and holds the listener in its compelling spell. Madarász has an impeccable sense of dramatic timing and gives the music a logic of such surging inevitably that the listener is riveted by its unfolding. The composer's musical language is Slavic, in the Bartókian mold, but there's more than a hint of
Prokofiev in its rhythmic propulsiveness and startling timbral contrasts. He's also a topnotch orchestrator, and the score bristles with brilliant and original colors, and his text setting is euphonious and lyrical.
Gábor Hollerung leads the
Hungarian State Opera Orchestra in a radiant and urgent reading of the score. Each of the four soloists sings beautifully, and with such fiercely strong feeling that they draw the listener inexorably into their strange world. Hungaroton's sound is clean and clear, with a natural ambience. Highly recommended for fans of new opera.