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

Négy nyelvű résumé

performance the whole repertoir of the company was performed. The guest performance, however, did not gain adherents. Years have passed till the new genre became established in Budapest. The first regular Hungarian cabaret named Bonbonnière opened only in 1907. From this time on cabarets of longer and shorter life followed one another ceaselessly. The French notion 'cabaret' has been transplanted into Hungarian, still the Hungarian varient of the genre shows considerable deviation from its Western predecessors. Dezső Kosztolányi the poet gave the description of the Llungarian cabaret in these terms: 'Our cabaret does not keep on calling the fresh humour delightful malevolence of Montremartre taverns as the cabaret of Paris. It is not bloody, not killing, not nerve-racking as the German one and unlike the cabaret of Vienna it does not display an inept petty bourgeois frivolity. From the beginning it was more exacting, magnificent and refined more literary than all the others. We have furnished it with the intellectual luxury of a small nation. There are hardly any prominent writers whose name would not have appeared in its programs and who would not have felt honoured by it. Because it was not the writers who condescended to it, but the cabaret elevated to them.' It was during the first month of the existence of Modern Variety Theatre (Modern Színpad Kabaré) that the specific features of the Hungarian cabaret have taken shape. The structure of programs took after the sample of Berlin but besides skits, monologues, poems chansons borrowed from the French cabaret played a significant role. This was possible only because an outstanding, talented actress turned up in the person of Vilma Medgyaszay who could excellently interpret Hungarian chansons on the stage. In the Hungarian cabaret a new line the announcer's speech appeared which remained to be the animating part of it unto this day. After Vilma Medgyaszay's withdrawal chansons gradually lost their prominence and were overshadowed by the announcer's speech in the program. The tradition and significance of the announcer's speech was retained by great personalities from Endre Nagy, László Békeffi, Szilárd Darvas to our temporaries Dezső Kellér and János Komlós. The Hungarian cabaret criticised social and political errors from the beginning. Like journalism it gave quick response to daily events. It was amusingly sarcastic. While joking it gave utterance to bitter social truths either in the announcer's speech or hidden in the items of scenes. The monologue, the duet, the sketch, the parody, the recitation, the brief skit, skits not longer than an hour, and the witty chanson were the characteristic stock pieces of the Hungarian cabaret.