Oldal 45 [45]
KÁLMÁN NÁDASDY AND GÉZA PÁRTOS: FREE WIND, 1950
129
Working People’s Party were rewriting history in a rather selfish way,’”’ a new,
mythical past was created for operetta,*° with a Russian line invented in
addition to the French and Viennese lines of the genre.!”! At the same time
(2), Free Wind was proclaimed to be the 1917 of light opera, since it “radically
revolutionizes the decrepit genre of operetta”, and although it retains the old
frames, it renews the content “already fallen into the squalor of kitsch”. This
renewal (3) is achieved by “its style, way of expression and outlook turning to
reality", and similarly to other Soviet works, by “demonstrating the struggles
of the working people, the problems of the present”.'** The seamen’s resistance
at the end of the production (i.e. the refusal to load weapons into the ship)
was almost compared to the rebellion in Battleship Potemkin and associated
with current political events. The approach to reality (4) was hailed as an
active resolution and contrasted with the attitude of “bourgeois decadence”,
i.e. with the “passive weapons of mocking”.'*° Authors like Offenbach had
only ridiculed the maladies of society, but their weak opposition and criticism
“cannot be the genre of liberated people in spite of all its progressive bourgeois
tendencies”.’*’ Free Wind was supposed to exceed The Grand Duchess of
Gerolstein since it “directly and actively made a stand for a great idea, with the
most serious weapons at its disposal." The duality of mocking and support
was also revealed in Dunayevsky’s oeuvre, and it was made more underscored
by showing that Suitors, his first operetta from 1925, was merely “satirical and
parodistic”, but criticism and self-criticism helped the composer to get over
19 Cf. Gyarmati: A Rákosi-korszak, 242.
130 Cf. Gábor Gyáni: Mítoszban, folklórban és történelemben elbeszélt múlt, in Ágnes
Szemerkényi (ed.): Folklór és történelem, Budapest, Akadémiai, 2007, 7-17.
Cf. "It is lesser-known that in the field of musical comedy, Russian theatre had its own
significant tradition of operetta until the middle of the last century. The highlights of this
genre are Natalka-Poltavka with a Ukrainian story and Beyond the Danube. These works
belong to the standard repertory of Russian operetta theatres and audiences love their
abundant melodies, folk humor and conviviality in all Soviet republics.” Fogarasi: Szabad
szél, 484.
Tóth: Szabad szél, 7.
Ibid.
Sándor Jemnitz: Szabad szél. Nagysikerű szovjet operett bemutatója a Fővárosi Operett
Színházban. Népszava, Vol. 78, No. 111, 14* May, 1950, 4.
Cf. Free Wind propagates “reality that can be checked in newspaper articles telling the driest
facts almost at the moment of their happening. Port workers are still on strike on Europe’s
shores and this Soviet operetta can already tell you something about them: the serious truth
in a light-hearted way. That imperialism is preparing for evil things, that potentates of
money are ruthless in politics and love alike, that [...] ordinary and poor people want peace,
they want freedom and jobs, and they can hinder the venom of weapons and corrupting ideas
from permeating the whole world.” Béla Matrai-Betegh: Szabad szél. Szovjet nagyoperett a
Fővárosi Operettszínházban, Magyar Nemzet, Vol. 6, No. 109, 12"! May, 1950, 5.
Szenthegyi: A Szabad szél zenéje, 5.
Jemnitz: Szabad szél, 4.
Szenthegyi: A Szabad szél zenéje, 5.
131
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