Page 171 - 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
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ntity-machines: the nationalism of hungar ian oper etta between the two wor ld wars
Chorus
You are beautiful, you are lovely, Hungary,
lovelier than the whole world,
When I hear music, I see your beautiful glowing face.
We fly there on our magic steeds, where grass, tree, leaf and flower call us!
Where the violin cries, a beautiful lovely country awaits us.3
Choltay’s castle is in Bodrog county, a corner formed by the River Tisa
and the Carpathian Mountains in the north-eastern part of pre-Trianon
Hungary. Bodrogköz is an ethnically complex borderland region, largely
inhabited by Hungarians, alongside Ukrainians and Romanians, in a cen-
turies-old pattern of coexistence. This ethnically diverse region appears in
a completely different light on the mental map4 of the Hungarian commu-
nity, not only in terms of its ethnic composition, but also in terms of its
geography. This mental map focuses on the perception and experience of
space within the relation of man and space,5 and this is how Bodrogköz be-
comes a lush green land, almost an Arcadia, inhabited solely by Hungari-
ans. This exuberant natural power, this lovely greenery is an image born of
emotional remembrance, not of reality, as Bodrogköz is well-known to be
the driest region of the Carpathian basin, with the lowest levels of annual
rainfall, a place where plant life is threatened both by drought and an early
frost. But at the time of the operetta’s premiere it was also common knowl-
edge that Bodrogköz was one of the first areas settled by the early invad-
ing Hungarians, that one of the troops of the legendary founding chieftain
Árpád rested here in 903. Since the event was recorded in Gesta Hungaro-
rum, one of the nation’s earliest chronicles,6 it became a lasting element of
Hungarian identity. Choltay’s castle therefore stands on the lands of the
conquering Magyar tribes, and the Choltay estate is described as an Arca-
dian image of the country as it once was.
The lyrics reinforce this mental landscape when they evoke two con-
trasting auditory memories, placing the mournful cry of the violin next to
the triumphant call of the trumpet.
If we analyse the lyrics and their dramatic context, we arrive at a his-
torically impossible moment: conquering Hungarians stand next to the
3 Ibid.
4 Kevin Lynch, The image of the city (Ann Arbor: MIT, 1960), 8.
5 Róbert Keményfi, “Az ‘etnikai táj’ kultúrnemzeti mítosza,” Regio 2, no. 4 (2002): 105.
6 Edit Tamás, “A Bodrogköz tájmonográfiája,” Zempléni múzsa 9, no. 35 (2009): 87–90.
169
Chorus
You are beautiful, you are lovely, Hungary,
lovelier than the whole world,
When I hear music, I see your beautiful glowing face.
We fly there on our magic steeds, where grass, tree, leaf and flower call us!
Where the violin cries, a beautiful lovely country awaits us.3
Choltay’s castle is in Bodrog county, a corner formed by the River Tisa
and the Carpathian Mountains in the north-eastern part of pre-Trianon
Hungary. Bodrogköz is an ethnically complex borderland region, largely
inhabited by Hungarians, alongside Ukrainians and Romanians, in a cen-
turies-old pattern of coexistence. This ethnically diverse region appears in
a completely different light on the mental map4 of the Hungarian commu-
nity, not only in terms of its ethnic composition, but also in terms of its
geography. This mental map focuses on the perception and experience of
space within the relation of man and space,5 and this is how Bodrogköz be-
comes a lush green land, almost an Arcadia, inhabited solely by Hungari-
ans. This exuberant natural power, this lovely greenery is an image born of
emotional remembrance, not of reality, as Bodrogköz is well-known to be
the driest region of the Carpathian basin, with the lowest levels of annual
rainfall, a place where plant life is threatened both by drought and an early
frost. But at the time of the operetta’s premiere it was also common knowl-
edge that Bodrogköz was one of the first areas settled by the early invad-
ing Hungarians, that one of the troops of the legendary founding chieftain
Árpád rested here in 903. Since the event was recorded in Gesta Hungaro-
rum, one of the nation’s earliest chronicles,6 it became a lasting element of
Hungarian identity. Choltay’s castle therefore stands on the lands of the
conquering Magyar tribes, and the Choltay estate is described as an Arca-
dian image of the country as it once was.
The lyrics reinforce this mental landscape when they evoke two con-
trasting auditory memories, placing the mournful cry of the violin next to
the triumphant call of the trumpet.
If we analyse the lyrics and their dramatic context, we arrive at a his-
torically impossible moment: conquering Hungarians stand next to the
3 Ibid.
4 Kevin Lynch, The image of the city (Ann Arbor: MIT, 1960), 8.
5 Róbert Keményfi, “Az ‘etnikai táj’ kultúrnemzeti mítosza,” Regio 2, no. 4 (2002): 105.
6 Edit Tamás, “A Bodrogköz tájmonográfiája,” Zempléni múzsa 9, no. 35 (2009): 87–90.
169
