Oldal 26 [26]
A REFASHIONED IMAGE OF REVOLUTION AS MUSICAL THEATRE
members and 24 orchestra members who made up the new company.? In the
spirit of the socialist ideal of work, an hour-by-hour agenda fixed the tasks of
all artists and technicians from the first rehearsal to the premiere. However,
the extremely high expectation was not solely “for the introduction of a
theatre”, but “for the fate of operetta itself”, since the press posed the question
whether “we can save the values of classical operetta into our better and purer
world, forget the ‘traditions’ of Hungarian operetta, i.e. tastelessness, levity
and cheap, contentless coups de thédtre. Can we offer human feelings and art
instead of sentimentalism and kitsch?”?? The prelude to this question of life
and death ofa genre was the “show trial” initiated against operetta, while the
preparation of so many justizmords was carried out on a sample used in the
USSR for nearly two decades, and typical phrases of the accusation appeared
in the reviews of the first productions of the nationalized Operetta Theatre
as well. Ihe newspaper of the Party blamed operettas for being made on a
one-size-fits-all basis so far, and even if their title changed, the same trite
record was played by the “crappy gramophone” of the Operetta Theatre. “This
bleakness was particularly striking in the last years”, until “the ship of operetta
sank into the swamp of low standards and adverse messages”.** Such trumped¬
up accusations between 1945 and 1949 created a hostile atmosphere, in which
the Operetta Theatre “was tumbling, Szabolcs Fényes did not produce bad
performances, but both officials and critics spiked his guns”.*° To avoid the
death sentence of the genre,** Margit Gaspar began a rescue action aimed at
integrating operetta into a theatrical ideal that matched communist salvation
history and creating “a myth of origin” for operetta in the spirit of Marxist
historiography. The very first summary of this was published in the year of
Students of Vienna, and the 15-page booklet argued that operetta was not
a product of capitalism, but a genre with a history of 2,000 years, dating back
Over the next five years, the number of actors (supported by 21 assistant actors) rose to 41,
choir singers to 44, dance choir members to 26, and orchestra members to 40. Cf. Szirtes, in
Az operett kerdeseiröl, 77-78.
István Fejér: Kapunyitás az Állami Operettszínházban, Színház és mozi, Vol. 2, No. 39, 29'*
September, 1949, 6.
34 (L.J.): "Bécsi diákok", 6.
35 Emil Sivó: Kár volt államosítani?, Színház 23:9 (1990), 10.
There was "a peoples democracy" where this judgment was made. Cf. "Last year the manager
of the Bucharest operetta theatre and a composer named Kirkulescu visited us [whose There
Was No More Beautiful Wedding premiered at the Operetta Theatre in Budapest on 5'" May,
1953 with moderate success] and they said that they were not allowed to play operettas
for years, since operetta was expelled from Romanian stages.” Speech by Jenö Semsei, in
Az operett kérdéseiről, 2.
s 24 e