Greeks Rave Over Budapest Spring Festival

The recent annual Budapest Spring Festival has developed into a popular international cultural event with more than one-third of its audience arriving from abroad to attend the various presentations. The two-week program this year, which is the 25th year for the event, included an impressive variety of 170 presentations that attracted audiences of more than 100,000. Of these, about one-third came from the European Union, including many from Greece, and North America. During the two-week period, Malev Hungarian Airlines, the national carrier, and Wizz, the low-cost Hungarian-Polish carrier, both operated daily flights from Athens, all of which were fully booked.

Performances included grand opera, operettas, musical shows, concerts, ballet and even Dixieland jazz. Internet bookings, introduced this year, accounted for some 15 percent of the total audiences. Parallel to the various performances were a series of special exhibitions.