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MILITARIZING OPERETTA, OR THEATRE CRITICISM AS WAR PROPAGANDA lines and sinuous shapes. Then the sailors’ bar, addressed to the Seventh Heaven, with massive vaults, a fishing net and lampions high above and an illuminated mermaid as a decoration at the top of the bar. Zoltan Fiilop’s sets, creating a “spacious, cozy frame” for each scene,”** and Tivadar Mark’s costumes, matching all characters and becoming slightly exaggerated only on figures involved in intrigues, gave nice examples of “operetta realism”, mentioned at the professional discussion of the production, though not clearly defined. In addition, lighting was highly appreciated as an essential element of scenography, which had operatic richness too, but lacked ostentation and fully served the mise-en-scéne. So did dance, culminating in the wedding preparation of the second finale, and full of movements proving that “operetta was suitable for bringing folk dances to the stage”.”*° Free Wind was Agnes Roboz’s thesis project in choreography at the College of Theatre and Film Arts, and concerning dances in an operetta, she really made a difference in the production, even though the initiative was already there in Students of Vienna. According to her distinction, “songs were followed by dance [in the past], regardless of the lyrics, the essence of the songs and their participants. It was a necessary and inevitable constituent. On the other hand, it was a separate show performed by a team of boys and girls."?" However, this “dull group no longer shows off, but the people dance and look into their future with joy and confidence”.*®’” That’s why she considered the “appearance of folk dance on our operetta stage” so significant, and gave many fine examples of it in later productions of the Operetta Theatre.”** IMPACT AND POSTERITY Despite the fact that the adaptation made Dunayevsky’s play as effective as the operettas of Lehar and Kalman a few years later, Free Wind did not become part of the standard repertory of Hungarian theatres, unlike the new versions of The Count of Luxembourg and The Csdrdds Princess. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Culture, Free Wind was performed 87 times in 1950 and 22 times in the next three years for a total of 74,563 spectators.”” Ihe production had completed the endeavor to stage nine new Soviet plays (plus two revivals) in the prosaic theatres of Budapest in the 234 Matrai-Betegh: Szabad szél, 5. 35 Székely, Szövetségi vita, 5. Speech by Ágnes Roboz, Szövetségi vita, 19. 237 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 239 The National Archives of Hungary, MNL OL XXXII. 20. 19 236 + 56 +
