Alpár Ágnes: A cabaret - A fővárosi kabarék műsora, 1901-1944 (MSZI, Budapest, 1978)

Négy nyelvű résumé

RESUME The turn of the 20th century has brought considerable changes in artistic life. In the second half of the 19th century naturalism has destroyed confirmed traditions. It has ruined the idle formalism of academism of literature and fine arts as well as the long established false theatricality of the stage. They were replaced by the detailed, minute description of everyday life. Quite evidently, as a reaction to the extremes of naturalism a new trend was about to be born proclaiming the autonomy of artistic reality. This trend made an attempt to renew art by means of devices totally different from naturalism: symbolism and stylization. This new artistic trend is îeferred to as liberty style, the same notion named as 'art nouveau' with the French, 'Jugendstil' with the Germans and 'szecesszió' with the Hungarians. Among others a new theatrical genre the cabaret arose in the atmosphere of liberty style fully in accordance with its endeavours. The antecedents of the cabaret are surely to be found in Parisian coffeehouses called 'café concert' or 'café chantant'. The Chat Noir café was the first where chansons, poems, dancing interludes and farces were regularly performed on an estrade set up in front of the tables. Later the tables were replaced by a small auditorium and the estrade by a small stage. The chanson played the central part in the French cabaret. This feature has been preserved in France until now despite the fact that the small rooms of the cabaret were succeeded by large, capacious stages and auditoriums of Music Halls. The first German cabaret was produced by the young Reinhardt and his circle. The first efforts of the Hungarian cabaret are very much related to it. Jenő Zoltán established Variety Theatre (Tarka Színpad) in a ground-floor hall of Metropolitan Orpheum (Fővárosi Orfeum) in Budapest, November 1901 just one month after the opening of Schall und Ranch in Berlin. However, the enterprise lived only a year. The next year Reinhardt and the Schall und Rauch Company visited Budapest and during the two weeks' guest