About the work
Opera in three acts by Ferenc Erkel to a libretto by Béni Egressy, based on József Katona's play of the same name, which had been banned by censors until 1860. Erkel composed early sections as far back as 1844–45, and the finished version premiered on 9 March 1861 at the National Theatre in Pest.
Plot
The Hungarian viceroy Bánk returns to court and learns that Queen Gertrude is pushing his wife Melinda toward her brother Ottó. When Ottó seduces Melinda and she loses her mind, Bánk kills the queen in despair, triggering an uprising of the Hungarian nobility against foreign rule.
Cultural significance
Bánk bán was the first large-scale demonstration of how Hungarian folk idioms could be fused with the means of French and Italian grand opera, and it remains regarded as Erkel's finest opera and a founding work of Hungarian national opera. Erkel himself, and later his son Gyula, revised the score several times, most recently in 1939.