A composer who has always been partial to the more conventional means and techniques, and has relied heavily on broad and stately melodies and subjective feelings, Kabalevsky has managed to produce several compositions that have wide appeal. One is the sprightly Colas Breugnon Overture. Colas Breugnon was an opera adapted by V. Bragin from a novel by Romain Rolland; it was first performed in Leningrad on February 22, 1938. The central character is a 16th-century craftsman—a jovial man who enjoys life and has a spicy sense of humor and a happy outlook on all things. The overture is essentially a study of that man, consistently gay and sprightly. There are two main melodies, both of them lively, and both derived from Burgundian folk songs.
Another popular work by Kabalevsky is The Comedians, op. 26 (1938), an orchestral suite made up of selections from the incidental music to a children’s play, The Inventor and the Comedians. The play is about the varied and picaresque adventures of a group of wandering performers in various towns and at public fairs. There are ten episodes in the suite, each in a light, infectious style that makes for such easy listening that this work is often given at children’s concerts. The ten sections are: Prologue, Galop, March, Waltz, Pantomime, Intermezzo, Little Lyrical Scene, Gavotte, Scherzo, and Epilogue.
Emmerich Kálmán
Emmerich Kálmán was born in Siófok, Hungary, on October 24, 1882. He studied composition in Budapest. In 1904 one of his symphonic compositions was performed by the Budapest Philharmonic, and in 1907 he received the Imperial Composition Prize. After settling in Vienna he abandoned serious composition for light music. From this time on he devoted himself to and distinguished himself in writing tuneful operettas. His first success came in 1909 with Ein Herbstmanoever, presented in New York as The Gay Hussars. Subsequent operettas made him one of Europe’s leading composers for the popular theaters. The most famous are: Sari (1912), The Gypsy Princess (1915), Countess Maritza (1924) and The Circus Princess (1926). In 1938 he left Vienna, and after a period in Paris, he came to the United States where he remained until 1949. He completed his last operetta, The Arizona Lady, a few days before his death in Paris, on October 30, 1953; it was presented posthumously in Berne, Switzerland, in 1954.
Kálmán’s forte in writing music for operettas was in combining the charm, Gemuetlichkeit and sentiment of Viennese music in general, and the Viennese waltz in particular, with the hot blood and sensual moods of Hungarian gypsy songs and dances.
The Circus Princess (Die Zirkusprinzessin)—first performed in Vienna in 1926, and in New York in 1927—was set in St. Petersburg and Vienna during the period immediately preceding World War I. When Fedora rejects the love of Prince Sergius by insisting she would sooner marry a circus performer, he seeks revenge by engaging a famous circus performer to pose as a member of nobility and woo and win Fedora. After their marriage, Fedora discovers the true identity of her husband, and leaves him. But she soon comes to the realization she is really in love with him and promises to come back if he in turn offers to give up his profession—a profession she now despises not from snobbery but because of fears for his safety. Two delightful waltz melodies—“Leise schwebt das Glueck vorueber” “Im Boudoir der schoensten Frau”—and an intriguing little melody that recurs throughout the operetta, “Zwei maerchenaugen” are the principal selections from this operetta.
Countess Maritza (Die Graefin Mariza) is Kálmán’s most popular and successful operetta. It was first produced in Vienna in 1924, and in New York in 1926. The setting is Hungary in 1922. An impoverished count, Tassilo, finds employment on the estate of Countess Maritza under the assumed name of Torok. He falls in love with her, but when she learns of his real background she feels he is a fortune hunter interested only in her wealth. About to leave the employ of the countess and to bid her permanent farewell, Tassilo’s fortune suddenly takes a turn for the better when his aunt, a Princess, comes to inform him that Tassilo is a wealthy man after all, due to her manipulations of his tangled business affairs. Now convinced that he loves her for herself alone, the Countess Maritza is only too happy to accept him as her husband.
This score contains some of Kálmán’s finest and most beguiling music in a Hungarian-gypsy style. The most famous song is in this sensual, heart-warming idiom: “Play Gypsies, Dance Gypsies” (“Komm Zigan, Komm Zigan, spiel mir was vor”). This number begins with a languorous, romantic melody that soon lapses into a dynamic Hungarian-gypsy dance. Austrian waltz-music in a more sentimental manner is found in three winning songs: “Give My Regards to the Lovely Ladies of Fair Vienna” (“Gruess mir die reizenden Frauen im schoenen Wien”), “I Would Like to Dance Once More” (“Einmal moecht’ ich wieder tanzen”) and “Say, Yes!” (“Sag ja, mein Lieb”).
The Gypsy Princess (Die Csárdásfuerstin) was first performed in Vienna in 1915, and produced in New York in 1917 under the title of The Riviera Girl. The heroine is Sylvia Varescu, a performer in a Budapest cabaret, who is loved and pursued by Prince Edwin. But the Prince’s father insists that he marry the Countess Stasi. Eventually the father’s heart is softened and he becomes more tolerant towards having Sylvia as a daughter-in-law when he is discreetly reminded that once he, too, had been in love with a cabaret singer. The principal selections from his score include two soaring waltz melodies: “Machen wir’s den Schwalben nach” and “Tausend kleine Engel singen hab mich lieb.” The score also includes a dynamic Czardas, and a pleasing little tune in “Ganz ohne Weiber geht die Chose nicht.”
Sari was introduced in New York in 1914. Pali is a gypsy violinist who has grown old and is eclipsed at one of his own concerts by his son, Laczi. Pali throws his beloved Stradivarius into the flames. Since both father and son have fallen in love with the same girl, the older man also renounces her. He wants Laczi to have her as well as his musical success. A bountiful score includes such delights as “Love Has Wings,” “Love’s Own Sweet Song,” “My Faithful Stradivari,” and “Softly Through the Summer Night.”