BUDAPEST - As Hungarian Gyorgy Kurtag, who is widely considered one of the greatest living classical composers, turns 100 on Thursday, he will offer a one-of-a-kind birthday gift to music lovers: a brand-new opera.
In recent weeks, people across the globe have paid tribute to the star composer, with Budapest marking his centennial with special events, concerts and documentaries.
Later this month, the world premiere of Kurtag's second opera "Die Stechardin" about the 18th-century love story of a German polymath and a flower girl will cap the centenary of his birth.
In a rare interview with a Hungarian weekly in 2017, Kurtag confided that composing can sometimes be "painful".
But despite being confined to a wheelchair and suffering a loss of hearing, Kurtag has lost none of his intellectual vibrancy or passion for music, according to those close to him.
"He doesn't hear so well anymore. But in return, he feels even more, he perceives even more from the world and from music," Concerto Budapest conductor Andras Keller told AFP during a rehearsal of Kurtag's new one-act opera earlier this month.
When his wife, pianist Marta Kurtag, who was also a close artistic partner, died in 2019, "everyone was scared about what would happen next", said Laszlo Goz, director of Budapest Music Center, where Kurtag now resides.
But Kurtag resumed composing, "writing increasingly larger and more complex pieces".
"He began teaching again, and now he has written his second opera, which is a kind of message to his wife, Marta," Goz said.
Over the decades, the award-winning musician became famous for composing short yet highly complex pieces, and only turning to opera late in life.
Throughout his career, Kurtag drew inspiration from literature and the works of famous compatriots like Bela Bartok. But despite his success, he was not immune to suffering from writer's block.
After returning to Hungary, in 1960 he became a repetiteur with the Budapest Philharmonic Society, and would later teach piano and chamber music at his alma mater.
At age 92, his first opera "Fin de partie" premiered at Milan's famous La Scala in late 2018.