Oldal 78 [78]
OCR
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 13án 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 +
