Musicologica Austriaca (Apr 2021)
Celebrating the Habsburgs in the Hungarian National Theater, 1837–67
Abstract
The musical theater had a central intermediary role in the propagation of national consciousness throughout East-Central Europe in the nineteenth century, and so too in Hungary. The Pesti Magyar Színház (Pest Hungarian Theater), which was renamed after 1840 to Magyar Nemzeti Színház (Hungarian National Theater), had an identical repertoire to that in all the Habsburg Empire, following a tradition inherited from the German-language theaters. The festive performances of the institution on occasions of political representation stand out. In honor of the members of the Habsburg family, the theater performed mainly operas and music theater forms, such as the works of Bellini, Donizetti, or Weber. The Hungarian national operas were also present. The so-called "Kaiserreisen" (imperial voyages) of Franz Joseph I to Hungary in the 1850s deserve more attention: the emperor visited the National Theater several times and was present at the performances of Hungarian operas, such as Franz Doppler’s "Ilka és a huszártoborzó" (Ilka and the recruiting of the Hussars), György Császár’s (Georg Kaiser’s) "A kunok" (The Cumanians), or the opera entitled "Erzsébet," which was written especially for the empress’s visit of 1857. These performances of the Magyar Nemzeti Színház and its repertoire can be interpreted in several ways. First, it was an adequate response to the imperial motto "Viribus unitis": a Hungarian contribution to the celebration of the royals as a part of the Habsburg Empire. Second, it served as a form of "passive resistance": in the decades in which the independence of Hungary was under threat, it reinforced a re-enactment of the opposition between Hungarians and "the others." The status of the extant material connected to the operation of the Magyar Nemzeti Színház is varied. On the basis of a new appraisal of the playbills and the press, the present study examines the program structure from the establishment of the institution (1837) to the coronation of Franz Joseph I and Elisabeth in Hungary (1867), focusing on the festive performances that served as political representation by studying the different layers of interpretation of the Magyar Nemzeti Színház’s musical repertoire.
