On 8 August 1840 the composer Ferenc Erkel conducted the premiere of his heroic tragic opera Bátori Mária to inaugurate the National Theatre in Pest’s Kerepesi Street (today’s Rákóczi street). Erkel was then 29 years old, and this would be the first ever performance of an opera composed in the Hungarian language.Erkel had relocated to Pest-Buda (pre-unified Budapest) in the mid-1830s, following a period in Kolozsvár (today Cluj Napoca, Romania). Kolozsvár was the historical stronghold of Hungarian language and culture where the first Hungarian-language theatre had been established in 1821. There, Erkel’s experiences with early musical theatre in the Hungarian language inspired his later efforts to create Hungarian-language opera.1Pest-Buda was a multicultural, multilingual city under the dominion of the Habsburg Empire, politically controlled from Vienna. Although Hungarian became the language of administration in 1844 following a political struggle (which ensued when German was proposed as a replacement for Latin in education and public affairs),2 multiple groups such as Romanians and Slovaks made up sizable minorities, and German remained the language of daily life.3 In the cultural sphere, the German-language Königliche Städtische Theater dominated the city’s theatrical and operatic scene. Erkel joined the Hungarian Theatre (renamed the National Theatre in 1840) shortly after it opened in 1837, and turned his attention to Hungarian-language opera. In Bátori Mária, Prince István, a ninth-generation heir to the Árpád dynasty, marries the noblewoman Mária Bátori in defiance of his father, the King. (The opera is named in reverse after Mária since surnames precede first names in Hungarian). The Árpád dynasty, named after the tribal leader who established a Hungarian state at the turn of the tenth century, symbolised both the claim to Hungarian independence from Austria, and Hungarian heroism.4 Erkel creates in István a heroic warrior who is introduced by a triumphant Hungarian march. Meanwhile, the King is represented through regal musical features and the score indicates that his entrances should be performed maestoso: in a majestic or stately manner. Erkel musically aligns the wavering King and his corrupt advisors with Hungary’s Habsburg oppressors, and the Prince with valiant warriors from Hungary’s past.Bátori Mária confronted the fear that Hungary as a cultural-linguistic concept would become extinct, that Hungary would become Germanized or lost amongst the competing minority identities. The opera culminates with Mária’s murder at the hands of the corrupt royal councillors, and the curtain falls as the Prince calls for revenge. The political conflict is unresolved, and Hungary’s future remains uncertain. Rather than expressing hopefulness, as found in the operas of other Habsburg minorities such as the Czechs or Croats, this Hungarian operatic landmark laments the lost glory of the past in relation to the present — and its implications for the future.