Music for babies and mothers
On 1 January 2013, the General Director of the Hungarian State Opera presented to the first child born in Hungary in the New Year the first copy of the Útravaló (For the Road) CD, which was also received by the family of every Hungarian new-born (whether in Hungary or abroad) in the so-called Promobox package. The programme has been a huge success to date and is set to continue. The recording, reproduced in 80,000 copies, will be followed by a new edition featuring brand new recordings from the ensembles and soloists of the Opera. The initiative was inspired by the words of Zoltán Kodály, who believed that musical education commences not in the womb, but even before the child’s own mother is born.
As the age of CDs came to an end, the Opera also went down a new and more cost-effective road: the eighth For the Road album was made available online. Instead of a physical medium, the boxes provided by Promobox contained informative documents and a recommendation for the Opera’s children programmes.
For the Road 2020 is 70-minute long selection of recent recordings of performances by the Opera Chorus. More than half of the 18 tracks are made up from Hungarian compositions by Ferenc Erkel, Zoltán Kodály and Attila Bozay, the rest includes pieces by Donizetti, Giordano, Spontini, Meyerbeer and Wagner.