Juraj Valčuha conducts Bartók

Juraj Valčuha conducts Bartók’s “The Miraculous Mandarin”

The Miraculous Mandarin Op. 19, Sz. 73 (BB 82), is a one act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók between 1918–1924, and based on the 1916 story by Melchior Lengyel. Premiered on 27 November 1926 conducted by Eugen Szenkar at the Cologne Opera, Germany, it caused a scandal and was subsequently banned on moral grounds. Although more successful at its Prague premiere, it was generally performed during the rest of Bartók’s life in the form of a concert suite, which preserves about two-thirds of the original pantomime’s music.