Ferenc Erkel (1810-93) is barely known outside Hungary, where he's revered as the father of Hungarian music and the composer of the nation's national anthem. His tragic opera, Hunyadi László, dates from 1844 and achieved immediate popularity through its historical, nationalist subject and through its use of typical Hungarian melodies and rhythms. Bánk bán, his most popular opera, dates from 1861 and also deals with a historical subject. The title doesn't refer to a financial institution. Bánk is the hero's name; bán is a title for a sort of provincial governor. The tangled plot reflects the opera's stiff construction and awkward if turbulent events. Bánk bán is considered Hungary's national opera thanks to its patriotic subject and Hungarian-based musical elements including the use of the cimbalom. It's performed regularly, and on national holidays busloads of schoolkids make up a substantial part of the Budapest opera audience. An album of excerpts is a convenient way to become familiar with these works, whose purely musical interest isn't of the highest order. Aside from the Hungarianisms, Erkel's writing is derivative, full of local adaptations of Italian opera conventions and the French spectacle operas of Meyerbeer.

Hungaroton recorded a complete Hunyadi László in the mid-1980s with Sylvia Sass and Bánk bán in the 1960s under the baton of Janos Ferencsik with Josef Réti, but this disc is not excerpted from those performances. I admit to unfamiliarity with any of the singers here, but they acquit themselves well enough--to these foreign yet sympathetic ears they sound idiomatic. But no one stands out vocally though soprano Júlia Osváth is affecting in Melinda's aria (accompanied by viola d'amore) and tenor József Joviczky is a dramatic Bánk. In the Hunyadi László excerpts, tenor József Simándy is affecting in the title role, coloring his lines nicely albeit with strain and wobble on sustained, louder top notes. Best are the women--sopranos Gabriella Déry and Júlia Orosz and mezzo Olga Szónyi--who contribute some impressive coloratura pyrotechnics. Hungaroton doesn't help its cause by refusing to burden purchasers with more than track listings and cast lists--no recording dates, no summaries of the operas' story lines or of the scenes and arias on the disc--helping to ensure their continued obscurity. [6/22/2001]

--Dan Davis