Three Nights of One Love premiere at the Pesti Theatre

2022. 12. 14.

The first Hungarian musical, Three Nights of One Love, which was groundbreaking at the time of its premiere in Hungary in 1961, was performed on 17 December by J. directed by Attila Vidnyánszky, will be presented at the Pesti Theatre on 17 December 2017. The production is a chronicle of lost youth in a world at war. Inspired by the fate of Miklós Radnóti and an Apollinaire poem, the strange-sounding hits of the work will be performed by András Kern, Sándor Lukács, Géza Hegedűs D. Hegedűs, Eszter Nagy-Kálózy, István Hirtling, Ákos Orosz, Zsombor Ertl, Zoltán Gyöngyösi, Szabolcs Horváth and Sára Varga Járó.

The Three Nights of One Love was first performed at the Petőfi Theatre, now the Thália Theatre, in the early 1960s and later made into a film, starring actors such as Vera Venczel, Benedek Tóth, Imre Sinkovits, Zoltán Latinovits and Iván Darvas. The libretto of the work was inspired by the fate of Miklós Radnóti and the Apollinaire poem translated by István Vas, which was found in Radnóti's diary. "I have torn this sound thread / Now you know the autumn is dead / On this earth I will never see you again / O smell of time sound threads / And I am waiting for you you know."

Miklós Hubay, István Vas and György Ránki could speak with elegant ease about a "barbaric" age, all its ills, and this is the greatest step towards healing. "When we were coming out of the premiere," István Vas told me in an interview, "Anna Hajnal said to me, 'Now your wish will come true...'" This remark reminded me of my days as a young poet, when I once said in front of her: 'I would give everything if I could write something that people could sing!'

"For a long time I was interested in Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. I can't get away from them. I don't want to. From this point of view, the choice of piece may be incomprehensible, but perhaps not so much because a Kodály student composed the music. I was looking for material where I could see the world falling apart through the eyes of young people. I always strive for irregularity. I'm inspired by unfinished things, music, images, unfinished texts. Now I am challenged by a new type of performance form and an exceptional cast. Vera Venczel first told me about the film she starred in when she was just twenty. Reading the play was strange and amusing, and later I felt that deep down there was a mysterious, painful vision of time. Young people talking about passing. My aim is to understand and, like the original creators, to dress the play so that it is brazenly born out of the present," says the director of the production, J. Vidnyánszky, Jr.

The story goes that the poet (Zsombor Ertl) cannot escape the war. Before his death, he meets the "three kings" at the front, who later bring the news of his death to his love. But they are unable to recall the last poem he entrusted to them.... "We are the three kings: András Kern, Géza D. Hegedűs and me. The last time the three of us played together like this was perhaps forty years ago in the play King Béla the Blind by János Székely. So it was about time Attila brought us together again..." - Sándor Lukács, who played Boldizsár, points out. 

After the premiere on 17 December, Three Nights of One Love will be shown on 18 and 29 December, 20, 21 and 31 January at the Pesti Theatre.

More information, tickets:

: www.vigszinhaz.hu/Egy_szerelem_harom_ejszakaja