HARANGI, Mária (HUN)

Born in 1975 in Pécs. She graduated from high school in 1994 and studied violin for 12 years. Between 1994-99 She studied Hungarian and French language and literature at the Loránd Eötvös University, and was a member of the József Eötvös Collegium. She played the violin and sang in the Vakvágány chanson orchestra. In 1999, She passed the Drama Teacher and Drama Director exam. In 2004, she graduated from the University of Theatre and Film Arts, as theatre director specialised in musical theatre. Her master was Miklós Szinetár. Her diploma performance was Donizetti's comedy opera Rita, and she wrote her thesis on "Music is half the battle", on the possibilities of using music in prose and musical theatre.

At the Opera House, after two co-directions with Miklós Szinetár (László Hunyadi, Rigoletto). She made her debut with Levente Gyöngyösi's contemporary opera The Stork Caliph. She has directed in several genres of musical theatre. She has staged Gianni Schicchi, Il Trovatore, The Spinning Room, Three Little Girls, The Seagull (contemporary opera by Thomas Pasatieri, Armel Opera Competition and Festival, New York) and created an unusual production of The Magic Flute with the HOPPart Company in collaboration with Tamás Ascher, Eszter Novák and György Selmeczi. In a large-scale concert with conductor János Kovács, she brought to life Debussy-D'Annunzio's mystery play The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian with the Savaria Symphony Orchestra and the National Choir, with the participation of opera singers, theatre and contemporary dance artists.

From May 2016, she has been artistic assistant at the Hungarian State Opera House. In autumn 2020, she staged Gianpaolo Testoni's contemporary one-act operas Fantasio / Fortunio, and directed a highly successful children’s performance based on Sándor Petőfi and Pongrác Kacsóh's János vitéz with the Opera's Children’s Choir. She is the first head of class and teacher of stage acting at the Éva Marton International Opera Studio, which was launched in the autumn of 2024.

She has directed both classic and genre-bending musicals, including West Side Story, Man of La Mancha, I Love You, You Are Perfect - Now Change!, Avenue Q, Into the Woods, Bonnie and Clyde. She has also worked in classical operetta and prose productions, staging Ferenc Lehár's The Land of Smiles, The Streetcar Named Desire and No exit, among others. She also regularly creates musical puppet and children's theatre productions, such as The Alliance of the Deer, based on Bartók's Cantata Profana, inocchio, and Once Upon a Time There Was a Piece of Wood - a contemporary musical tale for one actor and a clarinet. The HOPPArt Company has performed her production of There's more... at the National Theatre for several seasons with great success, and the production has also won a special prize from the ASSITEJ international association for children's and youth theatre.

In 2020, She received a DLA degree from the Graduate School of Theatre and Film Arts. She wrote her dissertation on the possibilities of higher education in musical theatre directing. Her thesis supervisor was Tamás Ascher.

During the quarantine period of the coronavirus epidemic, She directed a live online performance of Bernard Slade's play Same Time, Next Year, commissioned by the Madách Theatre, giving the actors the camera as a genre-creating innovation. This was followed by the Madách Theatre's Film-Theatre-Play literary series, the third of which was her first film starring József Gyabronka. Based on the forced labour camp diary of Ernő Szép, Smell of Humans won awards for best direction, screenplay and acting at several prestigious international film festivals.

Her husband, Gergely Romvári, director and set designer, is her frequent collaborator.

She is mother of three children.