Oldal 79 [79]
OCR
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. 33: Ss 33: o + 77
