I promised some Rudolf updates, and here they are...

First of all, the show will have its open-air premiere later this month at the Szeged Open-Air Festival in Szeged, Hungary. Dates are 28-30 July and 4-6 August at 9pm nightly. Details, including ticketing info and some interesting photos of the stage, can be found on the Szeged Open-Air Festival Website (in Hungarian, English and German).

The show will be back at the Operett Színház in Budapest, 26 September - 8 October 2006.

Also - a cast recording is in the works! Markus Tuepker from the SoundOfMusic shop posted on the GlobalVision message board that the show will be recorded in September, and released in time for Christmas. I've been able to confirm this. And of course I'll post additional details as I learn them.

All of the latest details and links can be found at http://FrankWildhorn.com

That's wonderful news! Thanks for the details, Peter!

Always my pleasure :)

Another new bit - I've just added a page about Rudolf to Nan Knighton's website. The news portion of the page is pretty much a duplicate of what I've already posted on Frank's site and spread around, but the page also touches on Nan's involvement in the show and lists the songs that have her lyrics. The page is here:

http://NanKnighton.com/projects/other/rudolf.shtml

I saw Rudolf at the Operett Theatre... the musical is fantastic (although my fav is JH :)) but the cast could be better. It seems as the director wasn't able to get new actors- but I have to confess, that Taaffe (Tamás Földes) and Mária (Bernadett Vágó, first cast) were great!
The costumes are good but sometimes I think the costume designer did not know what to do (once contemporary costumes, once really modern cloaks and shirts). The scenery is poor and many things were "stolen" from other musicals (they use sets from their Beauty and the Beast, Mozart! and Elisabeth...) and mixed it.
The translation not so good- I feel some words were only in a line just to fill it -the original is better.
Summa: I like this work of Mr. Wildhorn, great music and base story, but the Operett Theatre could make much more better :(

There are yet more photos from Rudolf posted online, this time from the open-air premiere in Szeged. Some interesting new ones in there. Links are on Frank's website.