Page 203 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2021. Opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama ▪︎ Operetta between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 5
P. 203
288 metres of velvet, 16 pairs of shoes, 12 yellow top hats, 5 bathtubs ...
show was the dominance of serious musical numbers instead of happier
ones. However, he wrote that
The patriotic structure of Nagy dolog a háború [War is a big deal],
Meg vagyunk szállva [We are occupied] and Jönnek a mieink
[Our boys are coming] scenes is effective and uplifting.
So the cosmopolitan tone of the original was completely changed to a natio
nalistic one.
Despite the fact that the original production could not be staged in
provincial theatres, Jenő Heltai (1871–1957), a well-known writer and a Bu-
dapest intellectual, attempted to create a smaller scale version of the orig-
inal Halló, Amerika! at Nyíregyháza. His “English girls” were Hungarian,
but according to a promotional article they were obliged to not to speak in
the town so that nobody would learn this,97 although this might have been
only a joke. The management also engaged Tibor Halmay, one of the stars
of the original production, but this relatively low-budget show flopped.98
Mainly because the downgraded show was not a spectacle anymore. The
haystack-scene (see Figures 4 and 5) illustrates this problem very well. The
original is described as follows:
Around it [the haystack] again that exceptional group of dancers,
this time in the stylised costume of Hungarian peasant girls, wear
ing a black silk scarf. At a sign they all rush up the haystack, pull up
their skirts, which are rich ruffled red tulle. The stack starts rotat
ing like a merry-go-round, and the girls in the mystical light look
like giant poppies in a bouquet.99
The Nyíregyháza production failed to create an abstraction of the
scene. But even if it succeeded, the visual code of the show had a differ-
ent meaning in a different cultural context outside Budapest. The folk cos-
tumes on the stage did not present an image of the idealised Hungarian “es-
sence” for the local audience because for many it was only an outfit, which
they regularly wore. We should also remember that Budapest audiences
had been introduced to the original through countless articles about the
genre, which did not happen before this local production.
97 Az Est, May 15, 1925.
98 Színházi Élet XV, no. 24 (14–20 June 1925): 69, https://epa.oszk.hu/02300/02343/00566/
pdf/.
99 Az Ujság, January 18, 1925.
201
show was the dominance of serious musical numbers instead of happier
ones. However, he wrote that
The patriotic structure of Nagy dolog a háború [War is a big deal],
Meg vagyunk szállva [We are occupied] and Jönnek a mieink
[Our boys are coming] scenes is effective and uplifting.
So the cosmopolitan tone of the original was completely changed to a natio
nalistic one.
Despite the fact that the original production could not be staged in
provincial theatres, Jenő Heltai (1871–1957), a well-known writer and a Bu-
dapest intellectual, attempted to create a smaller scale version of the orig-
inal Halló, Amerika! at Nyíregyháza. His “English girls” were Hungarian,
but according to a promotional article they were obliged to not to speak in
the town so that nobody would learn this,97 although this might have been
only a joke. The management also engaged Tibor Halmay, one of the stars
of the original production, but this relatively low-budget show flopped.98
Mainly because the downgraded show was not a spectacle anymore. The
haystack-scene (see Figures 4 and 5) illustrates this problem very well. The
original is described as follows:
Around it [the haystack] again that exceptional group of dancers,
this time in the stylised costume of Hungarian peasant girls, wear
ing a black silk scarf. At a sign they all rush up the haystack, pull up
their skirts, which are rich ruffled red tulle. The stack starts rotat
ing like a merry-go-round, and the girls in the mystical light look
like giant poppies in a bouquet.99
The Nyíregyháza production failed to create an abstraction of the
scene. But even if it succeeded, the visual code of the show had a differ-
ent meaning in a different cultural context outside Budapest. The folk cos-
tumes on the stage did not present an image of the idealised Hungarian “es-
sence” for the local audience because for many it was only an outfit, which
they regularly wore. We should also remember that Budapest audiences
had been introduced to the original through countless articles about the
genre, which did not happen before this local production.
97 Az Est, May 15, 1925.
98 Színházi Élet XV, no. 24 (14–20 June 1925): 69, https://epa.oszk.hu/02300/02343/00566/
pdf/.
99 Az Ujság, January 18, 1925.
201
