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ANDRÁS MIKÓ AND GYÖRGY SZÉKELY: THE COUNT OF LUXEMBOURG, 1952
350 What Székely pointed out had become the cornerstone of rewriting in
the dramaturgical activity of the Operetta Iheatre by that time. According
to Margit Gáspár, who was constantly reflecting their work theoretically,
"a libretto or its good core, if this core is viable, must be grown. It is therefore
necessary to carry out reworking in such a way that the play would be reborn
from its own material.”*' Gaspar specified “the good comic core, the ancient
comic idea” they found in the original script as: “the Grand Duke of Russia (Sir
Basil, an English magnate in the adaptation) wants to buy a woman”. In the
version of Békeffy and Kellér, Basil Basilowitsch** was transformed into the
governor of Ugaranda — since in 1952 a Russian, even a grand duke, could not
be a laughing stock -, and the amusing trio around him (a clerk, an embassy
counselor and an official, all Russians) became three capitalists, English lords
hunting for concessions. This illustrates the intentions of the adaptation: to
remove the operetta from “bourgeois kitsch”, from “the frivolous presentation
of heroes” and to create “truer figures, truer situations and a more credible
environment” instead.%* (It is interesting to note that René, the Count of
Luxembourg becomes penniless because of his bohemian way of life in the
original, but in the libretto of Békeffy and Kellér he inherits the title of Count
only at the beginning of the play, without wealth, thanks to his irresponsible
ancestors. In the original, Angéle herself undertakes a marriage of convenience
with René, which she is persuaded to do by Fleury in the adaptation.)
As in previous Hungarian productions “mostly the struggle of youth
against old age had been complicated without any social conflicts”,* these
conflicts were intended to be created in the 1952 adaptation, and the third
act was changed most profoundly. This act was moved from the lobby of the
Grand Hotel in Paris to a courtroom in order to make a judgment on the
representatives of a society branded as liars. That is why Székely named the
new text a “partisan adaptation”, exposing a series of phenomena kept invisible
so far, and he added that “an objective, impartial representation of this age
was wrong”.*** The majority of critics appreciated the moderate job, i.e. the
avoidance of “false updating”, “the projection of today’s political concepts
into it”.%7 (This also gives rise to the popularity of the Békeffy-Kellér libretto
to this day, i.e. ideological modesty, the lack of utterances that fit political
slogans, so the lack of textual acquiescence to the regime.) Nevertheless, they
350 Társulati ülés, 3.
Gáspár: A könnyű műfaj kérdései, 15.
352 Tbid.
353 He is called The Grand Duke Rutzinov in the English libretto of Basil Hood and Adrian Ross,
first performed at Daly’s Theatre in London in 1911.
Tarsulati üles, 3-4.
355 Ibid., 2.
356 Ibid., 34. and 35-40.
357 Balázs: Luxemburg grófja, 562.
351
354
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