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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 140 14 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. 14: S 143 14. ks 145 146 « 44 »
