Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

censor’s imprimatur, the minutes of the Diet: "Deserted by all / In this world of men / He is left alone / As are twigs on a wintry tree // Which give him scarce support; / He is driven by a dream / As he sails in his barge / To save the lives of drowning men,"

The poem was first read to the public on 27 April 1938, from the stage of the Hungarian Theatre, and by no lesser artist than the celebrated actress Róza Laborfalvi.

The plaque was originally meant to be set up on the Danube Promenade, but was then placed, in 1905 - perhaps as a reminder of the Franciscans' lifesaving activities — on the church-wall where it can be seen to this day. ("Thousands were given shelter in the Invalids’ Hospital, but the County Hall as well as the Franciscans' monastery was also filled to capacity,” recorded Wesselényi in his diary.)

The Composer of "the People’s Magnificent Hymn”

It was in 1835 that the column "Tuning In” of the journal Honművész carried a report of how Chopin's Piano Concerto in E-Minor "was played on the fortepi- ano by Mr Erkel, the conductor of the Buda Theatre much praised for his talent’’. Twenty-five years old at the time, Mr Erkel’s "notable talent" was already noted by the music-loving public of Kolozsvár. "It was there that I learned the most,” Erkel wrote later, "and it was there that I was filled with enthusiasm for the neglected cause of Hungarian music”. His whole later career was then guided by that enthusiasm in his resolution to create Hungary’s national opera. Beside his contribution to the daily work of the theatre, Erkel devoted more and more of his creative energies to musical composition, which was thus to drive his performing art into the background. In 1838 he was appointed the first conductor of the operatic orchestra of the Pest Hungarian Theatre, which was later to become Hungary's National Theatre. He saw it as one of his most important duties to raise the professional-standards of his company to those represented by the German Theatre (wh,ere he had worked for a while) by setting up a much larger orchestra than it had before and accumulating an independent repertoire. For the libretto of his first opera, Mária Bátorí (1840), he turned to Hungary’s history - the age of Coloman the Beauclerc. The music reverberates with the rhythmic, compositional and melodic qualities of the Transylvanian

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