Based on the analysis of the material at the archives of the Association of Theatre Directors in Budapest, the study explores the various stages as well as the internal and external perceptions of the process of perceived prestige loss. The main research questions raised by the author include how the executives of the association, primarily businessmen and theatre directors from the Budapest elite, interpreted the increasing pressure by the authorities which disrupted and gradually rendered impossible the operation of private theatres. How did they see the municipal authorities’ involvement in the theatre sector which had flourished according to the rules of market economy in the past? What type of responses did they have when the passing of the first anti-Jewish bills and the establishment of the Chamber of Theatrical and Cinema Arts abolished their former platforms of negotiation and mediation? How did these events transform their formerly loyal attitudes toward the authorities? The study also touches upon the parallelism between the idealistic, Utopian ideas emerging in the late 1930s and those present after 1949. In both of these cases, directing the “increase of cultural demand” at the theatre industry, stressing the necessary elimination of the commercial character of the sector, and bringing social factors to the forefront, were the strategies that justified state intervention. At these junctures, the unquestionably real problems of the private theatre model were thought to be solvable by central regulation, the re-education of the audience, and supplanting the former “elite” of the sector.

This study explores the failure of attempts to transform ‘consumer attitudes’ towards the musical theatre both by the Establishment and ambitions of the intelligentsia. Before 1945, the Budapest theatre scene was mostly in private hands and the most important genres were typical popular culture productions, such as operetta and musical comedy. In addition, they also constituted an integral part of the cosmopolitan theatre industry of the time. Following the nationalization of theatres in 1949, throughout a succession of different socio-cultural periods, the new centralized cultural policy applied various strategies to uproot these long-standing traditions, ranging from elimination and substitution to appropriation and adoption. The ideologically and aesthetically motivated ambition to transform consumer attitudes affected all levels of the performance model. In spite of these efforts, the musical theatre traditions, including the choice of plays and acting style harkening back to the age of the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy and the inter-war years, almost immediately re-emerged when Imre Nagy’s reform politics gained ground after 1953. The study first outlines how the artists and the audience adapted to the new aesthetics and theatre practice imported from the USSR between 1950 and 1953. Following this, it charts the looming crisis of the theory and practice of educational entertainment through the example of two Budapest musical theatres, Fővárosi Operettszínház and Fővárosi Víg Színház. The growing demand for ‘bourgeois culture-junk’, to use a contemporary expression, was often portrayed as a threat in public and official discourse in 1954. The study explores the crisis management methods, which were employed to address this threat on ministerial and party levels (Hungarian Workers’ Party). The paper also examines financial restrictions, such as measures of ‚rationalization’, restructuring the Budapest theatre scene, and cutting the number of theatre staff employed by the state; and explains how these measures were used to restore the monopoly of socialist realist musical theatre. The paper also provides a statistical comparison of audience reception figures of the new re-politicized musical theatre performances and traditional ‘bourgeois culture-junk’. Based on a wide range of archival documents, libretti and the close analysis of contemporary public discourse, the study suggests that the changing tactics of managing the crisis of ‚educational entertainment’ also reflects the story of political struggle within the communist party elite.

The term ‘popular theatre’, existing from the time of the French Revolution onwards, can be interpreted as an actual type of theatre, an aesthetic theory, a communal practice, or as a social/political function. This study focuses on a single aspect of this field: it explores concepts of popular theatre in the second half of the nineteenth century in relation to the Hungarian theatrical profession, specifically through the writing of the actor and director György Molnár. In the framework of discourse analysis, this study is aimed at exploring some categories and arguments that the founder of the Popular Theatre of Buda used in order to elevate this new type of institution to the ranks of the other national institutions that were in the making at the time. The sole focus on the pamphlets and two relevant monographs by Molnár is justified by the fact that as the leader and ’theoretician’ of the Popular Theatre (operating between 1861–64 and 1867– 70), he established the discourse of popular theatre in the tasks of the building programme. Elements of this discourse existed at least until 1945, primarily in theatre press. The social historical significance of this subject is also suggested by the fact that the forms of popular theatrical entertainment had the biggest impact on the masses before motion pictures. Consequently, their role in the ‘creation of traditions’, which happened parallel to nation-building in the second half of the nineteenth century, was of crucial importance.

This study focuses on the mechanisms of the cultural appropriation of an important mass culture personality in the context of the totalitarian communism. It claims that the locally and internationally recognised Hungarian boulevard theatre tradition of the 1920–1944 period was forcefully discredited as “bourgeois” after 1949, when Hungary became a part of the Soviet Empire and when the socialist realist aesthetics invaded even the music theatre practice. For demonstrating the cultural and political importance of this forgotten profane tradition, the paper examines the case of the greatest Hungarian operetta prima donna of the first half of the twentieth century, by using the concepts of “place of memory” (Pierre Nora) and “circulation of the social energy (Stephen Greenblatt). In the introduction the study outlines how Sári „Zsazsa” Fedák has functioned as a place of memory during her forty years of carrier and explains by example some extra theatrical, political meanings of her personality, of her roles, of her hits, by presenting and commenting a few citations from the well known theatre weekly of the pre-war period, the Színházi Élet. In the first part, the study tries to show that is was precisely her “place of memory” status, why Sári „Zsazsa” Fedák had been chosen as a symbolic figure for the communist political propaganda campaign, fought against the cultural heritage of the “Horthy era”, the 1920–1944 period, stigmatised as “fascist.” By using literary analyses, the study examines how the communist cultural politics has appropriated the genres and the devices of the condemned boulevard tradition in order to undermine the popularity of Fedák and the whole mass culture tradition represented by her, to bind it to fascism and to declare the necessity of the total renewal of the light entertainment, based on socialist realism. The study explores how the well known operetta lyrics, attached to the legendary roles, interpreted by Fedák were parodied, politicised in the communist humour magazine Ludas Matyi in the 1945–1947 period, in order to alienate the audience from the actress, who was first condemned to prison by the people’s tribunal, than banned from the socialist stage forever and evacuated from Budapest. The paper concludes by analyses of three detailed secret reports, written about Fedák’s funeral in 1955. These official reports reveal how, despite the artificial erasure of the actress form the public discourse, the communist Party was afraid of the reactivation of her memory, even ten years after her banning from the stage. Using these reports the study exposes how the actors and spectators, who organised her funeral, used this occasion for contesting the official depreciation of Fedák and for emphasising her “place of memory” status.

This paper focuses on the adaptability of a boulevard theatre genre in the context of totalitarian communism. Prior to 1945, the Hungarian operetta was a popular branch of mass culture that was integrated into international show business. When Hungary became part of the Soviet Empire, the intrusion of socialist realist aesthetics into the music theatre practice resulted in performances containing a mixture of entertainment and political propaganda. The professionalism of pre-war stars made the “socialist operetta” a relatively successful schematic theatre genre that was used in interstate cultural relations between Soviet block countries. These state-organised theatre tours were accompanied by ritualised, formalised manifestations of political friendship. This essay focuses on the Romanian tour of a “socialist version” of The Princess Csárdás. The adaptation was represented abroad as Hungarian socialist realist theatre art, despite the fact that the operetta composed by Imre Kálmán had already been staged in 1916. Based on confidential reports of the Hungarian diplomacy, the paper outlines the intended political goals and the actual gains of the Romanian tour. How was the ambiguous message of The Princess Csárdás read in Bucharest and Kolozsvár (a former Hungarian town, with a huge Hungarian minority)? What was the wider political context of this tour, and how did it relate to the Romanian role in the defeat of the 1956 revolution? These are the questions that arose from this example of appropriation of a significant piece of mass culture in a state socialist environment.