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A CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION BECOMES A LASTING LESSON
musical numbers.) Ihe notorious cancan was not sought to be a climax of
frivolity, " but it became so, and although spectators certainly loved it, some
bureaucrats considered it incompatible with socialist morality.?"
IMPACT AND POSTERITY
Orpheus, one of the most daring experimental ventures of the Operetta
Theatre led by Margit Gaspar, provided a lasting lesson in dramaturgical
work. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Culture, 84 performances
were seen by 93,423 spectators: in terms of numbers, it was not much behind
other shows. However, it provided an easy target at a time when the outbursts
against the genre of operetta seemed to be permanently calmed down by
the theatre’s previous productions. Reviewers denounced Orpheus with no
exception, questioning the gravity of operetta with some regret, saying that
the play needs “clearer ideological elucidation”, “stricter consistency of genre”,
“more profound representation of characters” and “a more demanding, poetic
grasp of the subject”.%! Although “there was never a single seat left empty in
the auditorium”, only “the ballet choir and the instructor of the dances, the
Polish national prize-winning choreographer Eugeniusz Paplinski” achieved
undisputed success.*"” In her report on the season, a month after the last
performance, Margit Gaspar herself called Orpheus a faux pas, admitting that
“the task was unusually difficult because the original work was only a distorted
mirror, but the writer attempted positive guidance in addition to satire”.*"
In fact, she acknowledged that their attempt to overcome The Grand Duchess
of Gerolstein was unsuccessful, even if, unlike all critics, she did not consider
the development of the play’s humorous facet a failure. After all, she found
Offenbach’s music “corrosive acid”, to which we must “add in lyrics that we
want to burn with music". Two years later, however, she identified the cause of
their misstep in the conflict of the music and the rewritten text. "Ihe Operetta
314 According to Margit Gaspar, who insisted on the appearance of folk dance in productions of
operettas from Students of Vienna onward, “cancan, now called such a foolish stage dance,
is also of ‘folk’ origin”, just like waltzes and polkas. Gäspär: A könnyü müfaj kerdesei, 7.
315 Cf, Margit Gaspar’s anecdote: “Jesus Christ, what we had received for the cancan, which was
the only good thing in Orpheus! At the opening, poor Anna Ratko [Head of the Ministry of
Health] shouted to the minister sitting in the opposite box, ‘How about this indecency?”
Sándor Venczel: Virágkor tövisekkel. Beszélgetés Gáspár Margittal, Part 3. Színház 32:10
(1999), 47.
316 Bacsó: Orfeusz, 5.
317 Rätonyi: Operett, Vol. 2, 292-293.
318 GHS: Az idei évad mérlege — a jövő év tervei. Beszélgetés Gáspár Margittal, a Fővárosi
Operettszínház Kossuth-díjas igazgatójával, Független Magyarország, Vol. 14, No. 25, 23“
June, 1952, 7.
319 Jegyzőkönyv az operett és tánczenei szakosztály..., 5.
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