Atilla Kiss-B., Director General of the Budapest Operetta and Musical Theater, is being relieved of his duties for the duration of a professional and ethical review at the theater, the Ministry for Social Relations and Culture announced Tuesday, reported Magyar Nemzet.
“The Ministry for Social Relations and Culture is launching an internal review regarding professional and ethical matters at the Budapest Operetta Theater, effective today. The decision follows the receipt of numerous employee complaints and professional concerns regarding the institution’s operations in recent times. After reviewing these reports, the Ministry… deems it necessary to conduct an objective and detailed investigation into the issues raised,” reads the statement.
The Ministry added that to ensure the review is conducted impartially, thoroughly, and without interference, Atilla Kiss-Balbina—director general of the Budapest Operetta Theater—is being relieved of his work obligations for the duration of the investigation. Zoltán Tarr, TISZA’s Minister of Culture, considered to be one of the Magyar regime’s chief ideologues, initiated an investigation into the affairs of the Budapest Operetta Theater last week. This move follows an escalating conflict over recent months between the theater’s management and a portion of the company.
Although protesting artists deny this, the entire affair is perceived by the wider public to center around political loyalties, and is indeed interpreted along ideological fault-lines. A group of artists are dissatisfied with the fact that János Dénes Orbán (no relation to the former PM), a prominent Transylvanian playwright, was paid by the Carpathian Basin Talent Support Nonprofit Ltd. (KMTG)—founded by the author himself—for the usage rights to nine of his plays for over 412 million forints (EUR 1.1 mil.) in public funds, and also that the Operetta Theater has paid him at least 129 million forints (EUR 350.000) in royalties since 2023 for various translations and operetta librettos.
In July, more than fifty employees stated in an open letter that they had lost confidence in Attila Kiss-B.’s leadership and called on the director general to distance himself from János Dénes Orbán. In his response, the director general said that while he understood the company’s outrage — the royalties paid being seen as relatively high by Hungarian standards — he did not accept that the leadership had lost the staff’s trust. A group of artists is now calling for Kiss-B.’s departure.
In a democratic society, politically active artists demanding that their director distance himself from someone they disagree with would not normally justify suspending a theater director pending an internal investigation.
Attila Kiss-B. is the longtime director of the Budapest Operetta Theater (Budapesti Operettszínház), and a Kossuth Prize-winning opera singer who was appointed to the post in 2019. He is simply perceived as an Orbán-era appointee by the company’s artists, and has faced strong animosity from some of the employees from the outset. He publicly framed his work as being in line with the previous government’s cultural policy of promoting national values and Hungarian culture. In the past, he has occasionally attended events where PM Viktor Orbán was present, and has refused to join the dominant FIDESZ-bashing rhetoric prevalent in artistic circles, or indeed to actively signal his sympathies towards Péter Magyar’s TISZA party.
Kiss-B’s removal follows a widespread pattern of replacing FIDESZ-era officials on every level or every segment of Hungarian public life and institutions, and replacing them with TISZA government loyalists or prominent left-wing activists.