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KÁLMÁN NÁDASDY AND GÉZA PÁRTOS: FREE WIND, 1950
1949-50 season, targeting a “new audience of predominantly workers”.*"
They were drawn into theatres with season tickets and group visits, and at
the professional discussion of Free Wind one of their representatives gave
voice to his receptiveness to a simple referential reading of the play stressed
by critics.*** However, some theatre people also had a naive conception of the
impact of Free Wind, when stating that “it steered young people’s desires for
tales and adventures in a direction favored by the party”, and it “enhanced
productive forces in spectators, who left the theatre as better people, who
could work more and solve their own questions easier”.” Therefore the
Hungarian-Soviet Cultural Society published an abbreviated version of the
operetta and its piano-vocal score for small theatre groups still in 1950.
The adaptation of Gyula Kolozsvari and Gyérgy Behar was published several
times, and the songs became available in various collections. Thanks to its
wide dissemination, Free Wind was well-known even decades later.”
However, having done the job of political mobilization, Dunayevsky’s work
appeared less and less often on Hungarian stages. Although it was staged
in Miskolc already two weeks after its opening at the Operetta Theatre, and
altogether more than 500 performances were held in Kecskemét, Debrecen,
Pécs, Szeged, Győr, Szolnok, Eger, Békéscsaba and at Déryné Iheatre, only
five new productions were produced in the 1960s and 1970s. Later even
fewer. After a modest renaissance in the 1980s, when it re-appeared in the
theatres of Szolnok, Debrecen and Békéscsaba, only Csaba Tasnadi staged
it in Kecskemét in 1999 with loads of irony. Reviewing the 1983 production
in Szolnok, Judit Csaki had already put Free Wind in a historical context
and considered “its revival in a changed socio-spiritual aura” justified as “an
important document of an era”.”® Director Tibor Csizmadia did not apply
parody or exaggeration: he reflected the work and the historical era in it by
showing them in their purity, trusting the spectators’ ability to “draw the
necessary conclusions”.”* Atthe same time, Dunayevsky’s work became more
240 Cf. Korossy: Szinhaziranyitas, 86.
241 Fogarasi: Szabad szél, 483.
242 Cf. “The newspapers wrote about the long and toilsome struggle that Italian and French port
workers were fighting when they wouldn’t unload weapons. We know they would lay down
their lives for continuing the fight for peace. This fight was well expressed in the play by the
behavior of the sailors when Mark6 informed them and they refused to board collectively in
the last scene." Krausz, Szövetségi vita, 14.
Sebestyén, Szövetségi vita, 13.
Csáki: "Hajhó! Zengj, te szabad szél!”, 39.
245 Tbid., 38.
246 Tbid., 39. — "Free wind, which previously mobilized audiences with its heroism, shows us
24:
ús
24.
ks
the same heroic deeds in windless conditions now.” Although it had been topical and its
“romantic-revolutionary music had incited actions” thirty years earlier, it had already
become statuesque and Csizmadia’s ideas referred to this state in this show. But in the end
“the goodies have an overwhelming victory. Intrigue is unveiled and though the sailors crave
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