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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. 15 2 «45 e
