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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 «57 «
