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ENDRE MARTON: STUDENTS OF VIENNA, 1949
Overall, music was much more appreciated than the play, which Szabad
Nép considered to have a good plot full of twists and turns, and “permeated
with serene, heartfelt glee from the beginning". But in the spirit of objectivity,
idée fixe of the time, the daily newspaper also found it essential to reveal
a "serious mistake" in the play: "it is wrong to exalt the frivolous Viennese
dancer, Jetty Huber at the end"." The critic of Népszava, another daily, went
further when judging the performance as a fiasco. Based on the difficulty of
dealing with revolution in an operetta, since it either "appears undignified, or
the glee and vivacity of operetta is lost", the critic believed that the creators
"fell to the ground between two stools. Ihey were unable to bring the events
of the Viennese uprising of 1848 on stage and the air of the revolution could
not be perceived." The critic found it problematic that “reactionary figures
were belittled" and their opponents, the revolutionaries appeared "too light¬
hearted”.° He also mentioned that the language of the play was “intrusively
out-of-date”. The critic involuntarily put his finger on the ambivalence of the
performance. With Students of Vienna the Operetta Theatre joined a series
of artistic achievements fitting the propaganda machine of the Hungarian
Working People’s Party, but relying on the power of familiarity, they tried to
make up for the lack of political pedantry and communist phraseology with
sublime feelings, much wit and fine satire.”
6 (L.J.): "Bécsi diákok", 6. — This objection is not fully understandable in the light of the
libretto, since the promptbook contains a passage that can be interpreted as some kind of
“exaltation”, but it is crossed out. “JETTY: I’d need a whole sea to get clean. GABOR points to
the crowd in the alley: Here’s the sea. [...] Jetty, in a dizzy, almost intoxicated state, lets the
crowd sweep her away, as if it were indeed the waves of the sea lifting and dropping her into
the depths.” Instead, a sentence was written into one of Jetty’s last utterances by hand: “But
my life ended today.” When Strauss Jr. turns to her with an apologetic gesture during the
great happy ending, Jetty just says, “It’s too late, Janoska”, which is followed by an instruction,
also handwritten: “Jetty away into the villa”. This is far from suggesting apotheosis, but
rather withdrawing and having compunction. As soon as Latour, the Austrian Minister of
War is removed, Jetty also disappears so that only the singing, dancing and triumphant
crowd would remain onstage, filled with the intoxication of the last sentence: “PISTA:
Gabor, the Hungarian troops smashed Jelaci¢’s army at Székesfehérvar.” (Students of Vienna.
Promptbook, 65.) This ending illustrates the adjustment to the refashioned concept of the
bourgeois revolution and war of independence: the extraction of a moment of history, i.e.
only one event among many others and the propagation of the victory of the revolution.
68 y.y.: Bécsi diákok, Bemutató az Állami Operett Színházban, Népszava, Vol. 77, No. 229, 274
October, 1949, 2.
© Ibid.
The quasi-obligatory element of the alliance between workers and peasants was included in
the operetta only through two supporting characters: private Havranek, a poor soldier from
the Hungarian countryside and Jetty’s brother, Thomas Huber, the leader of the workers
supporting the students of Vienna.
+ 31°