The collaboration between the Music Institute of the Faculty of Arts at Pécs University and the Pannon Philharmonic has arrived at a jubilee: it will be the tenth time this year that they have presented the end-of-year exam performance of the Voice Department in the Kodály Centre. This jubilee prompts us to look back on the past decade: Mozart’s operas were staged most often (The Magic Flute, La Clemenza di Tito, Le Nozze di Figaro), Georg Friedrich Händel came second with two works, and then Jacques Offenbach, Carl Maria von Weber and Engelbert Humperdinck with one composition each. When picking the opera to be performed, we always need to take into consideration what vocal skills and abilities our students have and that the audience should be interested in the chosen piece.

While directing and staging the performances, we invariably wish to make sure that all participants and singers are creative artists who can make the genre of the opera lovable and exciting to their own generation. We strive to showcase the musical and theatrical pearls that these artists – singers, instrumental musicians, conductors and directors – have already discovered for themselves. Several singers taking to the stage in the performances of the past decade are now singing in the Hungarian State Opera, and some of them are enjoying solo careers working on Hungarian and international stages. Besides the voice students, it is also an excellent opportunity for the university's symphony orchestra to take to the stage of the Kodály Centre. Apart from the classical symphonic repertoire, the annual opera performance brings new and fresh colours into the ensemble's life. Our instrumental students can attend the rehearsals of the Pannon Philharmonic in the framework of a university course, and the most gifted among them can even participate in various projects of the PFZ. At these opera performances, however, they have the serious job of working together as an ensemble. The members of the Symphony Orchestra of the University of Pécs keep changing from year to year. Still, there is a steady point: their conductor, Balázs Kocsár, who prepares both the musicians and the singers for the yearly opera performance.