György Vashegyi deserves the gratitude of the Hungarian audience not only for his dedication to researching and promoting the the great artists and their musical masterpieces – treasures both dramatic and otherwise – from French cultural history, but also for introducing us to many highly talented performers. This occasion offers a chance to make the close acquaintance of the young up-and-coming Lyon-born tenor Julien Henric as he helps us discover an entire range of operas and composers over the course of an evening of Romantic arias. The programme features not only some big names from the world of 19th-century Parisian musical theatre, but also others that have ended up in various degrees of obscurity. This means that in addition to melodies by Bizet, Gounod, Berlioz and Offenbach, we will also hear a representative selection of excerpts from the works for the stage by such musicians as Louis Clapisson, the prolific master of the opéra comique genre, and Marguerite Olagnier, a composer particularly drawn to Oriental exoticism.