ABSTRACT
Though Silver Age operetta was a primarily German-language product, Hungarian settings enjoyed broad popularity on the operetta stage, following the model provided by Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (1885). However, Strauss’ Der Zigeunerbaron contrasts its Hungarian and Gypsy characters with more ‘civilised’ Austrians, deriving musical and dramatic colour from these ‘others’ but also blurring them together in ways that could irritate Hungarians. By contrast, Imre/Emmerich Kálmán (1882–953), one of the most successful operetta composers of the early twentieth century, found a way to satisfy the international audience's appetite for what Micaela Baranello (2014) has called ‘Hungarian fire’ while transforming the depiction of the Hungarian onstage into a sophisticated European that better fit the Hungarian self-image. Kálmán's The Csárdás Princess (1915) and Countess Mariza (1924) underline the way that Kálmán revised standard character types. No longer was ‘Hungarian’ – at least the romantic lead Hungarian – equivalent either to the exotic Gypsy, the ‘countrified’ peasant, or some mixture of the two. Instead, the plot and music highlight class conflicts and urban/rural contrasts. Showpieces in both The Csárdás Princess and Countess Mariza provide the Hungarian stereotypes audiences expected, framed within a cosmopolitan twentieth-century Hungary that was absent from Der Zigeunerbaron.
The need to appeal to different audiences, though, led to substantial differences in the ways these shows were understood, and even what music a show must include. The Csárdás Princess, for example, has different music in Hungary from what is heard in the rest of the world. In Countess Mariza, the writers of the Hungarian text deliberately omitted certain vague ‘exotic Hungarian’ elements of the German version, inserting instead a celebration of one beloved city that had been ceded to Romania in the settlement that ended World War I. The adaptability of Kálmán's work to vastly different national and political points of view offers a prime case study for operetta's multiplicity of meanings.
