A smile not as good as the famous smile of Antonia Staats but of that ilk. In my late 50s. Not so good now
MOTTO: As Oscar Wilde may have said: "Life is too important to be taken seriously". But the Hagakure had the idea too: "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly"
I am at the moment "nuts" about the 2004 performance at Moerbisch of Kalman's Graefin Mariza. I have already written a bit about it but I think I should add a few things that might, via the magic of Google, be helpful to people looking for more information about it. There is very little available in English about it online so far.
I think I have watched the show every night since I got the DVD some weeks ago. It is to me great entertainment and also a perfect work of art. I even still laugh at jokes that I have heard around 30 times already! The combination of Kalman's music and the no-expenses-spared staging at Moerbisch is hard to beat. I love the Moerbisch steam train.
And, in the usual way for operettas, the show is exceedingly romantic. Love is its theme. So why the Devil do I enjoy it? I see myself as one of the world's least romantic persons. But as the ancient Greeks used to say, "It's a wise man who knows himself" and the fact that I have been married four times may be some evidence of that. And I still think that I married four very fine ladies.
Lots of good excerpts below;
But if you want English subtitles you will have to buy the DVD. The words are of course in German, but the music is international.
The producers of the show never resolved the conflict between representing the period of the show as either the 1920s when it was written or the late 19th century in which it is set. There were also a few references to modern times, but mainly for humorous effect. I was rather pleased that a passing reference to the EU got a big laugh. It is a bureaucratic monster that needs to be laughed at.
The story
The story is that an Austro-Hungarian lady (Mariza) is plagued by so many suitors that she retreats to her estate in Hungary on the pretence that she is going to get married there. She has however an elderly suitor who follows her to her estate. Her estate manager (Herr Toerek) is in fact an impoverished aristocrat and she (of course!) falls in love with him. But then there is a big misunderstanding that has to be resolved.
The second-string story involves involves a rich Yugoslav estate owner, Baron Zsupan, and the sister of "Herr Toerek". She wants him but he initially thinks he wants Mariza. When he finally realizes that he really wants the sister he has the devil of a job getting her back.
The cast
Moerbisch is such a prestigious venue in the world of operetta that the organizers must have had just about untrammeled choice among all the many singers of the German lands. Germans did terrible things to themselves (and others) in two world wars but artistic talent still abounds there. So the directors at Moerbisch could demand performers who were both brilliant singers and great actors -- and pretty good dancers too. And in 2004 they got all that.
And Dagmar Schellenberger as Mariza was the first among greats. Her brilliant acting and rich soprano voice rather mesmerize me. Her acting would be taken as over-acting at Hollywood but it was perfect for operetta, where realism is secondary to a great show. I enjoy her amazingly expressive acting as much as her faultless singing. She has exceptionally expressive eyes. Her facial and bodily expressions are perfect for every moment of the story and convey almost as much as her singing. She does hauteur, anger and ecstasy equally briliantly.
And I loved the comic performance by Marco Kathol as Baron Zsupan almost as much. He is a very good tenor who, unusually, was also a ballet dancer for some years. And his dancing background shows. His moves are so fleet and flexible that they are a wonder to watch. He must have been a pretty good ballet dancer too. He is a pleasure to watch.
And he is obviously still very strong and fit. He picks up Schellenberger as easily as if she were one of the wispy little ladies of ballet. And Schellenberger looks to be a fine figure of a woman, almost a "big bizzem", as they say in Scotland. When the character Penizek later in the show checks out her "architecture" he had reason to be pleased with what he saw. For most of the show she wears heavily "glammed up" clothes that rather disguise her body but when she gets into her milkmaid Tracht towards the end of the show she looks very good indeed.
In another operetta, Die lustige Witwe, we find the meaning of "architecture" spelled out a little more -- as a good mezzanine and a good balcony. I think we get the drift.
All of the singers in the show performed their roles very well but it is Schellenberger and Kathol who cause me to watch it again and again. After watching the show many times I now laugh the minute I see Kathol roll onto the stage on his railway handcar.
The songs
The best song of the show is undoubtedly the Varazdin song. It is very catchy. But until you try to sing it you don't realize that it is a tongue-twister too. Kathol and Schellenberger to well to gallop energetically through it. When I try to sing along I can't do it. I always stumble over Gulaschsaft (goulash juice). The words are below:
Komm mit nach Varazdin! So lange noch die Rosen blüh'n,
Dort woll'n wir glücklich sein, wir beide ganz allein!
Du bist die schönste Fee, von Debrecen bis Plattensee,
Drum möcht mit dir ich hin nach Varazdin!
Denn meine Leidenschaft, brennt heisser noch als Gulaschsaft
Und in der Brust tanzt Herz mir Czardas her und hin!
Komm mit nach Varazdin, so lange noch die Rosen blüh'n,
Dort ist die ganze Welt noch rot, weiss, grün!
The "rot, weiss, grün" (red white and green) refers to the colours of the Hungarian flag. The operetta is set in a grand Hungarian estate.
The male lead in the show has some good arias, with "Komm Zigan" being particularly dramatic, but none of them stuck with me the way the Varazdin song did.
Go to the 48 minute mark on the video for the Varazdin song. The words of the whole Varazdin segment are here
The inhabitants of the fine city of Varazdin in Northern Croatia are probably not too keen on the song as it portrays Varasdin as home to 18,000 pigs -- when Varazdin has much grander real claims than that.
Other details
It took me a long time to figure out what the luminous blue ball was all about but I think I finally get it. It represents the moon. The gypsy woman "Manja" prophesied that in one lunar cycle Mariza would find love. And when they do acknowledge their love they hand the ball back to Manja. The lunar month is over. And at that point Serafin reappears to mark the end of the month.
And at one point we get a bit of Serbian, the most widely-spoken language in the Balkans. In the wrap-up scenes at the end of the show the rich aunt from Southern parts repeatedly addresses her long-lost lover as "Dragi", which sounds a bit harsh to English ears. It just means "Darling".
And if you know a bit of history some strange things happen. When Mariza asks Herr Toerek, "Haben Sie einen Frack" he replies affirmatively. But nobody in the show at any time wears a late 19th century Frack. A late 19th century Frack was what was known in English as a frock coat, a long coat that belled out slightly towards the bottom. It was not cutaway. You occasionally see them on gamblers and the like in cowboy movies. In Graefin Mariza formal dress is the more modern Frack of the 1920s, a tailcoat. The producers of the show kept the original words but not the period dress. The subtitle translators rendered Frack as "dress-shirt", which is simply wrong. "Evening clothes" would have been better.
And I should say something about the Puszta. It is mentioned quite a lot both at the beginning and the end of the show. In the subtitles, it is sometimes translated (as "prairie") and sometimes not. As Wikipedia informatively says: "The Hungarian puszta is an exclave of the Eurasian Steppe". It is a large area mostly of grassland with rather infertile soils -- but the interesting part is the people who live there. Wikipedia doesn't tell you about that. It's a hard life there and it breeds a tough people. And it is the women of the Puszta who are idolized in Graefin Mariza. They are seen as particularly lively and attractive -- and, one suspects, rather easily seduced by rich Hungarian men.
Hungary generally is in fact greatly romanticized by Kalman. And not only mainstream Hungarian society but also the Hungarian gypsies are extolled. Gypsy music is in fact to a large degree the focus of the show. But gypsy fortunetelling is treated with respect, as are gypsy dancers. Why was Kalman so enthused by gypsies? It's got to have something to do with the fact that Kalman was a Hungarian Jew (born Imre Koppstein). Antisemitism was already rife in Vienna and elsewhere when Kalman was writing -- Nazism arose in fertile soil -- and it must have freaked him. So was he trying to claim a new identity for himself? Perhaps. He always seems to put some scraps of his native Magyar (Hungarian language) into his show and there were a few small bits in this show -- Jonapot etc.
There is a lot to note about the language in the show. It took me a while to figure out what was going on when the word Zigan was used. When sung, it sounded like Sieger (victor) to me but I eventually figured out that it was just an abbreviation for Zigeuner (gypsy).
And a curiosity about the language was a roughly 50/50 split over where the emphasis should be placed on Mariza. Is it MAHriza or MahRITza? Schellenberger pronounces it the latter way but others do not. So either way is "correct".
Translation issues
There is quite a lot of wordplay in the show but you miss most of it unless you know some German. One thing that struck me as odd was when the majordomo opined that Bela Toerek was named "Bela" because he was good looking -- an allusion to the Italian "bella", meaning beautiful. But Bela is a common Hungarian Christian name and Hungarian is unrelated to other European languages so how could he think that? Apparently there is no agreed meaning for the name "Bela" so he was at liberty to make a romantic speculation about it.
And the split between Northern and Southern German pronunciation is referred to. Northern Germans tend to look down on Southern Germans but Southerners don't give a damn about that. And Fuerstin Cuddenstein, the rich aunt, is portrayed as speaking in a broad Southern way. Like the Swiss, she says "Daitsch" instead of "Deutsch". So she brings her German teacher, a former thespian, with her to "improve" her speech.
The translators do a manful job of turning German into English but the translations are quite "free" (non-literal). I don't underestimate their difficulties, though. German and English were the same language 1500 years ago but a lot has changed since then. And the two languages do to an extent cut up reality in different ways these days. I have made a few notes about that from my days translating the German of Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler into English. A lot of what those two gentlemen said during their lives poses difficulties for the modern political Left so had not been available in translated form online. So it was amusing for me to let the cat out of the bag.
So all that adds up to the fact that you get a lot more out of the show to the extent that you understand German. Translations just cannot do the whole job of conveying the original intention of the text. One instance of that occurs when the Graefin is declaring her intention to stay on her Gut (estate). To deter any opposition to her decision,she adds, "sicher und sicher". That is certainly very emphatic in German and Schellenberger's facial expression says more than words probably could anyway. But sicher literally means firm or secure so you cannot translate it well directly. You have to use a circumlocution. And no circumlocution that I can think of is as emphatic.
And there is in the subtitles what I regard as a major mistranslation. Verwalter is translated as "bailiff", which mostly means an official of a law court these days. The German literally means someone who exercises power on behalf of someone else so a simple "manager" would have been better.
So I hope that my various comments here about things in the show will help to a small degree to make up for any lack of German in those who view it.
Mariza falls for her Verwalter
Harald Serafin, Schellenberger and the purloined letter
Schellenberger in her milkmaid Tracht
On to the politically incorrect bit!
Anne watches a lot more ballet than I do and Russia is of course a ballet powerhouse. You only have to see magical performances such as that by Ekaterina Kondaurova as the Firebird at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersberg to know why. And Anne remarked to me recently that she has never seen a black or Asian face in a ballet performance from Russia. All the faces look like the faces we both grew up amongst. You cannot usually tell one Northern European face from another just by looking at them. A Russian could be an English person for all that looks give away.
And I notice the same in the performances I have seen from Moerbisch. I have not seen them all so maybe there has been some "diversity" there at times. It's actually a bit of a shock to see someone who could be the person next door speaking very foreign-sounding German words.
But perhaps an old guy like me may be permitted to be pleased to be watching faces like those he grew up among.
John Ray's Home Page; My email: jonjayray@gmail.com . The Blogroll. Photo album for this blog here. Links to memoirs from previous years can be found at the foot of this page.
Brief bio
My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 80 at the time of writing in late 2023. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. I am Australian born of working class origins and British ancestry. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here
What would I like to be remembered about me long after I am dead and gone?
I would like it to be remembered that I too often experienced one of life's greatest pleasures: The first mouthful of cold beer on a warm day.
That pleasure will last as long as human beings are human beings, I believe
(Mind you: A Vegemite sandwich when you have a skinfull is nearly as good -- but that is for Australians only)
I am less certain about Bach. The last thing that people will remember about me long after I have gone will probably be: "He liked Bach". Will J.S. Bach continue to inspire people for a thousand years more? I think so. But beyond that I am not sure.
And here is a distinction that will be uncomprehended within a few decades of my death: "He coded FORTRAN with great ease". There are already few who would understand that distinction
Some wisdom
Haggis: A primitive peasant food dragged out of obscurity and given eternal life by a poet
"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." — Thomas Jefferson, 1785
“When you see a ball on the road, make a full stop. There’s usually a kid running right behind it.” — Paulina Gomez
My favourite scriptures:
But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 19:14)
Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. (Eccl. 11:1)
My favourite words that were ever said to me: "It's good to be with you, John"
The way we were: My first graduation picture below, a very long time ago (1968) , holding a volume of the works of I.P. Pavlov. A total nerd -- but one who had girlfriends
Above: As I was in 2023
More pix -- wives first
Marrying DNB 1973
Honeymooning at Peregian with JP 1976
Jenny in 1984
Marrying Jenny
Jenny 2020
Marrying Big Kath. 1995
JHM, 1996
With first girlfriend Janet 1964
Joyce Hooper
Judith M 2004
The way we were. With Anne. 2006
Anne 2020
I too once wore black tie. In 1993 at The Mansions restaurant on Petrie Terrace. CW not shown as she took the picture
In the unlikely event that anybody wants to read what I wrote in years past, the archive links at the foot of this column make that easy.
The further back you go, however, the more you will encounter missing pictures. The net is like that. If you are interested in pictures you may therefore find it best to look at the single-page versions of these notes. I find it easier to keep the pictures up to date on them. They are as under:
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