Oldal 63 [63]
IMRE APÁTHY: ORPHEUS, 1952
Democrats”. So Orpheus became involved in the campaign against pacifism,
which used to be a swear word at that time: against the “bourgeois attitude” of
those who also wanted peace, but refused to fight. However, the production was
reproached for getting stuckin just “dreaming of peace”, in spite ofsome sentences
about “the importance of fighting for peace”.°* On the other hand, Orpheus
was also implicated in the anti-Social Democrat campaign of the Hungarian
Working People’s Party, which systematically destroyed its internalized enemy
between 1950 and 1952.’ All in all, ten days before the country celebrating
the 60" birthday of “Stalin’s best Hungarian disciple”, ie. Mátyás Rákosi
with much ado on 9" March, 1952, the production, written with remarkable
ingeniousness despite its schematism, was interpreted as an example of the
Operetta Theatre’s willing to comply. Ultimately, its creators could get over
everything the superior institutions expected. Since “the dramatic literature
of the 1948-1949 season had been condemned to be politically uncertain”,
Hungarian playwrights had to “commit themselves firmly to socialist realism
for the following season. Nevertheless, [...] anti-imperialist themes as well as
the ‘fight for peace’ were missed and anti-church propaganda was found too
weak.”#5 Orpheus focused on these shortcomings and weaknesses, even more
diversely than promised by the central season planning for 1951-1952, when
it was only mentioned that its “new text would satirize the relationship of the
White House and the American underworld”.*°”
As a tendentious refashioning of a classic, Orpheus became the season’s
second premiere between The Women of Szelistye and The State Department
Store, two new Hungarian operettas with a historical and a contemporary
story, respectively. It was based on the lesson learned from the rewriting of
The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein two years earlier, and sharply distanced from
the profile of the Févarosi Vig Theatre, which started at the beginning of that
season and was “planned to be transformed into a theatre of operettas from
an unspecified revue theatre”.»* Although some of the productions staged
under the management of Margit Gaspar so far failed in official judgement,
253 Gábor Antal: Orfeusz. Hámos György operettje a Fövärosi Operettszinhäzban, Magyar
Nemzet, Vol. 8, No. 64, 16 March, 1952, 7.
254 Tbid. — “When planning the 1950-1951 season, Brecht’s classic, Mother Courage and Her
Children from the German Democratic Republic was considered to be staged [certainly not
in the Operetta Theatre]. However, it was treated with caution, since objections were raised
to the ‘alleged pacifist’ tendencies of the work. As a result, it was only in March 1968 that this
play could be staged.” Korossy: Szinhaziranyitas, 100.
Cf. “Social Democrats could not be forgiven for agreeing with [Istvan] Bethlen in 1921 and
operating within a legal framework and often in alliance with the various bourgeois parties
throughout the Horthy Era." Ignác Romsics: Magyarország a XX. században, Budapest,
Osiris, 2010, 229.
Korossy: Színházirányítás, 86.
The National Archives of Hungary, M-KS 276. f. 89.cs. 399.
Korossy: Színházirányítás, 109.
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