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ANDRÁS MIKÓ AND GYÖRGY SZÉKELY: THE COUNT OF LUXEMBOURG, 1952
Two years later, Ihe Count of Luxembourg disproved the contemporary
invalidity of an operetta Írom the Silver Age, because it was partially
freed from the “dust” mentioned above by Margit Gáspár in relation to
misjudgment. This “dust” was the byproduct of the tradition of playing
operettas. The Count of Luxembourg had been last staged at the Operetta
Theatre before the nationalization, in May 1944, and Margit Gaspar said
that it was necessary to wait a long time for new premieres of Lehar and
Kalman for acting-pedagogy reasons too. She blamed actors for “the reign of
routine and idées fixes of acting when these operettas were played”, so “the
actors’ approach had to be reformed first by new works”.**' While Luxi in
1952 mainly “differed from any other shows because it replaced the silly, old
jokes with French humor and character comedy”, so operetta was “brought
closer to comedy as a literary genre”,*” acting was sought to be reorganized
by means of current developments in prosaic theatre. Kamill Feleki’s acting,
for example, was considered by the daily newspaper Szabad Nép to be the
evidence that "Stanislavskys method could be used to stage all dramatic
genres","? and efforts were made to demonstrate it by other actors too.
Overall, acting became realistic only partially, but the illusion of realism
was increased by the mise-en-scéne,*** so the staging of a classical operetta
could be based on a new mode of performance. The theatre wanted to create
something exemplary in this way too, with an important lesson and a series
of bad experiences in the background.
The lesson they learnt was that “reworking a classical operetta is much
more difficult than writing a new one. Both acting and staging are more
challenging than in case of a contemporary play.”**° On the one hand, Margit
Gaspar did not believe in staging the classics without rewriting, and thought
that “unscrupulous revivals [in rural theatres and on the radio], which we are
currently witnessing”, were unhealthy, because “they are not artistic, because
#1 Banos: A szinigazgat6, 38. — Cf. also “[...] we had to get rid of very bad traditions in this field.
Musical theatre was not considered a real, serious and mature art. It was often the actors
who repeated mechanical movements a lot, only joking was important to them, and jokes
were gathered from a wide variety of collections.” Ibid.
Ibid., 38-39.
György Sebestyén: Egy kiváló színészi alakításról, Szabad Nép, Vol. 10, No. 317, 19"
December, 1952, 3.
334 It was also highlighted by Yuri Milyutin, the composer of Trembita, when he visited
Hungary: “When I came here, I thought I was going to see an old-fashioned performance of
an operetta, the continuation of the Viennese tradition. I was surprised when the curtain
went up and I felt the air of real life on stage, right from the start. I saw figures that reminded
me of Labiche’s temperamental figures. This is also a great merit of the revision of the text.
The reality of stage events was enhanced by the fact that, thanks to the directors, the stage
crowd lived an organic life in the play and was not just a singing group. [...] The greatest
virtue of the production is that it is tasteful, ambitious in acting and has a very high musical
quality in every scene.” Gaspar: Napló Miljutyin elvtárs látogatásáról, 164.
385 Gáspár: A könnyű műfaj kérdései, 13.
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