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ENDRE MARTON: STUDENTS OF VIENNA, 1949 Jetty Huber, a prima donna and Johann Strauss the Younger. The rewriting incorporated a strong interpretation of the comedy, adjusted to the “official 99, image of 1848”: “the clear and stark opposite of the Hungarian people and the Habsburg dynasty with its alliance of lords and magnates”.*° There were two important models for preparing the script: the productions of Captain Bought on Tobacco and Spring Sounds. The former became a model in the boldness of transforming the pretext. While the libretto needed only minor modification, Margit Gaspar found the music of Captain Bought on Tobacco “useless in its original form” and asked Ferenc Farkas to recompose it.°° (The famous Song of Liberty, Ivän’s air, was born at that time from a quartet of the angry boyars.*’) The latter was a model in using familiar melodies, since Spring Sounds, premiered at the Magyar Theatre in 1948, was based on music by Johann and Josef Strauss. Moreover, members of the Strauss family became characters of the play (besides Johann and Josef, their younger brother, Eduard as well), just like in Students of Vienna (Johann Strauss the Elder and the Younger). Spring Sounds was based on Die Straufsbuben, an operetta premiered in Vienna in 1946. Its Hungarian adaptation was made by Ernő Innocent Vincze and its music was reworked by Aladar Majorossy, who both played key roles in the creation of Students of Vienna." In terms of playwriting and musical selection, the classical practice of creating operettas was taken into account, i.e. "Latyi [Kálmán Latabár], Honthy, Teri Fejes, Bilicsi, [and even Ratonyi, Maria Mezei, Andor Ajtay] all needed a role and we had to start introducing young people. This is how Zsuzsi Petress got a role, [...] and it became her first role.”°” For this reason, 55 Ibid., 479. — According to Marxist interpretation, A Hungarian Emigrant “seizes a historic moment when the old order, not foreseeing its destruction, prepares for further domination, but receives a final blow from new social forces and acts in a rather comic way during its downfall”. Ibid., 472. Banos: A színigazgató, 13. 57 Tbid., 14. Die Straufsbuben consists of 11 scenes, written by Herbert Marischka and Rudolf Weys, and set to music by Oscar Stalla. According to Ulrike Petersen, “Vienna’s first postwar Singspiel, a trusty Strauss pastiche that became the touchstone for a recovering Austrian national pride, and likewise proved a last — missed — chance to find operetta a new lifeline.” Ulrike Petersen: Operetta after the Habsburg Empire, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2013, 1. — Spring Sounds, as well as Students of Vienna, became parts of a considerable tradition, since music of the Strauss family inspired at least twenty-five operetta-pasticcios between 1899 and 1949. Cf. ibid., 164-165, http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/ Petersen_berkeley_0028E_13191.pdf (accessed 26 May 2018). Venczel: Virágkor, Part 1, 17. — Margit Gaspar always emphasized the attention she paid to putting “budding actors” in position. Therefore “I had Petress have a hit already in Students of Vienna” (Banos: A szinigazgat6, 18.) It was No. 9. “Tancra kér, tancra varj” (“Asked for a dance, wait for a dance”), which was later recorded with Hanna Honthy (playing Jetty Huber in the production) as Anikö’s Song (A Primadonna dlma. Qualiton, 1967). However, the title is misleading. The copy of the working community lets us presume that Anikó would have been the name of the second prima donna’s character in Students of Vienna, but it was + 29 +
