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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 +81 +
