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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 13: Ss 13: a 13: = 13. a 136 137 138 +43»
