Astromusik: Gergely Vajda - A Report to the Academy

23 November 2025, 06:00 pm.
FUGA Budapest Center of Architecture
1052 Budapest, Petőfi Sándor utca 5.

"The protagonist of Franz Kafka's 1917 novella, the monkey Peter the Redhead, reports to the Academy on the adventures that transformed him from an ape into a human being. Considering the spirit of the age and our immediate environment, this is only possible before the Academy; and even then, it is better if the report is not presented as dry, scientific reasoning, but as an easily understandable, audience-friendly cabaret scene. Kafka's writing, like Diary of a Madman (Gogol) or On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco (Chekhov), is perfectly suited to monodrama, and since it touches on several topics that are still relevant today — decolonization, environmental protection, alcoholism, animal rights, the situation of artists and art in the world—it cries out for a stage adaptation. My one-act opera, officially defined as a "musical scene for tenor, accordion, and percussion instruments," — was conceived for Georgi Sztojanov's virtuoso voice and personality in such a way that Georgi not only plays and sings, but also directs the piece himself. Similar to the tenor part, the accordion and percussion parts are also tailor-made, the former for Zsanett Szatzker and the latter for Aurél Holló. The stage space imagined during the composition process is none other than that of the FUGA Budapest Center of Architecture, which commissioned the work; once again, thanks to the editor, Csanád Kedves! The libretto is my own work, based on a comparison of the original German text, the available English translations, and Tandori's Hungarian text. (Gergely Vajda)