TáDéVé reviewed in SZÍNHÁZ

The review, published on 11 November 2026, covers the Örkény Theatre and Budapest Independent Opera’s programme of short operas. Below is an English translation of the passage on TáDéVé; the full Hungarian article is linked at the end.

“Between Tornyai’s and Dobos’s operas comes what I found the most accomplished of these five-minute pieces: Judit Varga’s setting of Egy magyar író dedikációi (Dedications by a Hungarian Writer). She has wonderful material to work with: Örkény’s miniature portrait of twentieth-century Hungary and its ills, a catalogue of human pettiness, opportunism, compromise and everyday frustrations.

Varga makes the most of it, with one musical caricature after another. The fanfare for the museum opening is played on a kazoo. At times, the chorus recites the various forms of Tá.Dé.Vé.’s signature with the enthusiasm of a Young Pioneer troop (Orsolya Sáfár is excellent); elsewhere, it supplies a running illustration of the dedications, accompanying declarations of love with a cacophony of moans and the greeting to the “Downtown Dog Baths” with the racket of a zoo.

Zoltán Friedenthal’s Tá.Dé.Vé. sits in a wheelchair, piled high with the offending books, silently enduring the recital of his dedications. Beside him, Márta Murányi steals the show as she delivers them. She is dazzling, both as an actor and as a singer. With remarkable range, she traces the artistic career and character that emerge through the dedications, to hilarious effect, making the most of the parody in her part’s more “operatic” flourishes.

Károly Hajduk is equally memorable as the master of ceremonies at the museum opening: a Mephistophelean figure in a red jacket, with a sardonic smile, delivering his lines in Sprechgesang.”

— Orsolya Gyárfás, SZÍNHÁZ, 11 November 2026. English translation of the passage on TáDéVé.