Page 78 [78]
FREEDOM FIGHT FOR LOVE, AN EXCELLENT FARCE AND SOME MUSIC BY LEHÄR
ever."??3 Luxi, as theatre people called it, which had 278 performances and
was revived twice, became convincing proof of the vigor of operetta after
the theatre had successfully fought those who wanted to bury the genre and
proved them wrong with ten shows. The turn towards Lehar came from the
realization that the “progressive tradition” of operetta, which had been “badly
neglected for years”, had to be nurtured. “We misjudged the operettas of Lehar
and Kalman. We only considered their bad lyrics, and although our heart was
bleeding for their music, [...] we thought they could not be saved. We were
wrong. We denied the tradition of Lehár and Kálmán, even though we should
have continued to develop it, we should have cleaned it from the dust."
Misjudgment, mentioned by Gaspar, had characterized the statements of the
Association of Music too, which had emphasized the contemporary unviability
of plays born in the so-called “Silver Age” of Austro-Hungarian operetta.*”°
In 1950, for example, the composer Ferenc Szabé said that “the heritage of
Kalman and Lehar had completely failed. This line could be furthered now in
the form of a caricature at best.”**° Endre Székely, the composer of The Golden
Star, also claimed the inability of reviving Lehar and Kalman, since “there
are two traditions that we can appreciate: a positive stand in a positive age
or a critical stand in a reactionary age. Lehar and Kalman were negative in
reactionary times, so we cannot appreciate them.”**’ Certainly, members
of the Association of Music were well aware of the fact that had provided
embarrassing experience for the Operetta Theatre in the three seasons
preceding The Count of Luxembourg, namely that “we lack new operettas.
There is no new foreign operetta either. We have to turn to older ones.”?”*
Nevertheless, Sandor Fischer considered Lehar to be indefensible because
“it is not possible to write progressive text for his reactionary music”,*”? and
Zdenkö Tamassy did not regard “Lehar’s bourgeois operetta style” as fit for
modernization either.**°
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid. 12.
3% The works of Emmerich Kálmán and Franz Lehár, along with the works of Oscar Strauss,
Leo Fall and others, were already canonized between the world wars as masterpieces of
the “Silver Age” of Austro-Hungarian operetta after the “Golden Age” of works by Johann
Strauss Jr. and Karl Millôcker, among others. Cf. Viktor Lányi: Az operett, in Bence Szabolcsi
— Aladár Tóth (eds.): Zenei lexikon. A zenetörténet és a zenetudomány enciklopédiája, Vol. 2,
Budapest, Győző Andor, 1935, 278—279.
Jegyzőkönyv az operett és tánczenei szakosztály... , 2.
#7 Ibid.
328 Comment by Tamässy Zdenkö, A Magyar Zenemüveszek Szövetsegenek 1950. március 13¬
án megtartott operett és tánczene szakosztály IV. üleseröl, Typed manuscript, 3. Location:
The National Archives of Hungary, MNL OL 2146/62.
Ibid. Cf. also "Only progressive, revolutionary and realist plays are allowed to be revived.
326
32!
e
Lehár is not a realist author. [...] Even if we put his plays in today’s environment, his music
is not modern." Ibid.
330 Tbid.
.76 +