Oldal 46 [46]
MILITARIZING OPERETTA, OR THEATRE CRITICISM AS WAR PROPAGANDA
its weakness, and “strive for a modern way of expression”.'”? The composer’s
activism was praised (5) since Free Wind was considered as a solution to the
re-politization of operetta, which had been a “politicized genre” anyway, until
the “withered social content” of bourgeois operetta began to prevail." It was
a new aspect added to the contrast of old bourgeois operettas vs. new Soviet
operettas, brought up a year earlier, after the opening of Captain Bought on
Tobacco. According to the Marxist history of the genre, operettas of the first
half of the 20 century were deliberately made apolitical and used as parts of
“ideological state apparatuses” (Louis Althusser) that deceived audiences.
The merit of Soviet operetta (6), promoted as their antidote, was said to be its
plainness, optimism and “life-affirming music”, which “stimulate deeds [...]
from the point of view of socialist progress”, instead of sustaining submission.”
This recognition has contributed to the operetta’s being not only tolerated, but
found as specifically suitable for the one-party system “by conveying serious
political messages in the flattering language of the most popular genre of the
masses”.!** The task of Free Wind, the sum of all these characteristics and
goals (7), was intended to be an example: to show “composers in our country
the way of the genre’s improvement” by “aria-like songs, duets, generously
constructed finales, symphonic interludes, the conduct of the choir, and even
by cheerful musical numbers indispensable in an operetta"." But Hungarian
musicians were not interested in the guidance. The joint debate organized by
the Association of Theatre and Film Arts as well as the Music Association
two weeks after the premiere did not step in the limelight. Endre Székely
resignedly said that “our musicians [...] still underestimated this genre”. He
8° Fogarasi: Szabad szél, 483-484. — Hungarian spectators knew the “red Mozart of Soviet
cinema” from one or two songs, marches and film scores at the time. (Cf. Vadim Goloperov:
Isaak Dunayevsky: The Red Mozart Of Soviet Cinema, The Odessa Review. 8 August,
2017, http://odessareview.com/isaak-dunayevsky-red-mozart-soviet-cinema/ (accessed 14
April 2018). Dunayevsky composed the music of Ivan Pyryev’s film, Cossacks of the Kuban
(1949), which reached Hungarian cinemas when Free Wind opened at the Operetta Theatre.
According to Margit Gaspar, “his film score of Circus, with its famous waltz and lively
march, was already part of our daily music consumption” (Banos: A szinigazgaté, 25.), and it
could also inspire the tension of waltz and march in Students of Vienna a year earlier.
Jemnitz: Szabad szél, 4. — But “Soviet artists were not deceived by the desolated conditions
of the genre. They did not search what it had become, but where it could get, where it could
be orientated.” Ibid.
Cf. “After a boom in the sixties of the last century, operettas became more and more boring,
monotonous and unrealistic. Under cover of glitter, they tried to entertain people in a
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pleasant, eye-catching way, but in fact they had evolved into a consciously used means of
depriving the masses of politics.” Fogarasi: Szabad szél, 483.
Szenthegyi: A Szabad szél zenéje, 5.
Jemnitz: Szabad szél, 4.
Speech by György Hámos, Szövetségi vita, 22.
Szenthegyi: A Szabad szél zenéje, 5.
Székely, Szövetségi vita, 1.
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