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FREEDOM FIGHT FOR LOVE, AN EXCELLENT FARCE AND SOME MUSIC BY LEHÄR
they derail operetta and spoil the taste of the audience”.*** The damaging
impact of recklessly abbreviated but not rewritten plays was also reported
by public organizers, who detailed “what a dreadful destruction is going on
in the countryside. Terrible brigades reach out to state farms and farming
cooperatives, they get to places that even Faluszinhaz [which went to small
villages to make theatre] has not reached yet. [...] The Count of Luxembourg
is produced by four or five actors at such events for 4—8 Forints.”**” On the
other hand, Margit Gaspar did not prefer adaptations that refashioned old
operettas according to present-day directives, such as a production of Eve
in Szeged, in which Lehar’s operetta was “set in a factory [and] was about a
working girl, whom the factory manager married at the end”.*** She considered
the juxtaposition of text and music as another form of bad revision, and
mentioned the 1952 production of Orpheus in the Operetta Theatre with
Offenbach’s frivolous music arranged to the lofty plot of fighting for peace.**”
Luxi tried to avoid these extremes and to set a good example of appropriating
the revitalized tradition of operetta, and it was acclaimed by critics not only as
a theatrical, but also as a cultural act.**° Moreover, this time they appreciated
Lehar’s “upbeat and optimistic” music, “flowing broadly and full of melodies”,
which “today’s audience also likes”,?*! as a significant contribution to the
construction of socialism.*” It was necessary indeed, because the year of
Luxi, at the height of the terror of Rakosi’s regime, presented the inhabitants
with a serious challenge in a process for four years then, which was “nothing
more than forced experimentation in the laboratory of a whole country with
people who had little or no knowledge of the essence of socialism”.°*?
336 Ibid., 12.
337” Anonymous comment, Ibid., 19-20.
338 Ibid., 13.
339 Cf. “Beautiful music is given, let’s write a new text, put the two together, and a good new
operetta is going to be born. It’s a misleading way of thinking! We tried it once in Orpheus
and failed so much as I hope we would never again. György Hämos started to rewrite Orpheus
with great enthusiasm, and the text became highly poetic, but completely independent of the
music." Ibid., 13.
Cf. “The extraordinary production of the Operetta Theatre has reshaped an old operetta and
made it truly enjoyable. It has even done more than that. It has taken another step forward
to strengthen our culture of playing operettas." Sándor Balázs: Luxemburg grófja, Színház és
Filmművészet 3:12 (1952), 564.
László Gombos: Luxemburg grófja, Népszava, Vol. 80, No. 305, 30 December, 1952, 4.
Cf. “After such a production, people go whistling to the factory, to the office and work more
cheerfully the next day.” Balázs: Luxemburg grófja, 562.
Gyarmati: A Rákosi-korszak, 200. — Cf. also “1952 was a black year for both economy and
society. Forced industrialization and the vast development of the army in the early 1950s had
predicted a supply catastrophe, aggravated by an unprecedentedly poor harvest in 1952 and
uneven and disorganized distribution. [...] even industrial production fell by 10%, almost
exclusively at the expense of light and consumer industries. [...] in winter there were already
800,000 rural families (and no longer just ‘kulak’, but middle peasant families) without
supplies. It is estimated that the consumer price index increased by 38% in a single year:
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