Oldal 47 [47]
KÁLMÁN NÁDASDY AND GÉZA PÁRTOS: FREE WIND, 1950
himself, however, was apt to be a disciple and his musical play, Ihe Golden Star,
became the next production of the Operetta Iheatre six months later, based
on a libretto by György Hámos, who translated and reworked Free Wind.
DRAMATIC TEXT, DRAMATURGY
Since it was a Soviet work, the Operetta Iheatre handled Free Wind with
extreme care, but its lyrics and music were as much reworked as any other
operettas. György Hámos was listed only as a translator on the playbill, but
he also made large-scale modifications."" Following Margit Gáspárs ideas,
he improved the libretto significantly and applied the well-tried practice of
writing operettas: he adjusted the play to the company and created a new role
for the formerly neglected Kamill Feleki.'** Dunayevsky’s operetta, born in
1947 anda Stalin Prize winner, received a “large-scale dramatic structure",
“well-planned intersections of music and drama”'° and grandiose finales
made into highlights of musical dramaturgy at the time of its Hungarian
adaptation."! Although Margit Gáspár was exaggerating when she stated that
47 There is no reference to the fact (either on the playbill or in the press) that the text and
the music were revised. In any case, the cooperation of the Operetta Theatre with Gyérgy
Hamos began with Free Wind. It was followed by the elaboration of the libretto of The Golden
Star and then the complete rewriting of Orpheus. Margit Gaspar recalled Hamos entering
the Operetta Theatre: "Kálmán Nádasdy, then director of the Opera House, was our guest
director. [...] When I said that I wanted to include a humorous character in the play for
Kamill Feleki, he asked worriedly: ‘Yes, but who can do it?’ ‘You'll see’, I replied mysteriously.
I remember his surprise when a smiling young police officer, who ran the child protection
department, entered the theatre the next morning and I said, ‘Here’s the adapter’. It was
György Hámos, an excellent writer in civil life and our colleague from then on. He received
the Kossuth Prize a year later.” Banos: A szinigazgat6, 26-27.
Cf. “I told Nadasdy, ‘Listen to me, Kalman, there’s this singer, Caesar Gall, who’s doing the
Freedom Song, and then he’s fooling around all the time, so these two don’t fit. I’m going to
have this part cut in half. Caesar Gall is coming and going like the storm of the revolution.
He will be played by an opera singer, and we’re going to make a separate role for Kamill from
all that’s comical in the original character.’ This is how the figure of the theatre prompter
was born, which Gyuri Hamos wrote for him brilliantly. Kamill counted the length of his
presence onstage in Free Wind and he had a total of five minutes. But with those five minutes
he got to the top.” Venczel: Virägkor, Part 1, 17.
19 Ibid.
150
148
“[...] after which you can no longer continue the conversation in prose, so you must sing.”
Speech by Imre Apäthy, Szövetsegi vita, 16.
To see the awe-inspiring work of the adapters, one should compare the production conceived
by means of the promptbook and the score at the archive of the Budapest Operetta
Theatre with the film from 1961 by Leonid Trauberg and Andrei Tutiskin, which pressed
Dunayevsky’s operetta into 82 minutes and shed light onto its poor dramaturgy.
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