atddta 32: The Burgher King-operetta p 916ish

[János Székely]

2008/5/18 grladams at teleport.com <grladams at teleport.com>:

> Burgher King
>
> The ruler of a Central European Country feels disconnected from the people
> because the lands he rules are so vast, and their sentiment is for their
> country to be independent, not merging with rulers who are cousins of the
> west.


Not exactly. This is a Viennese operetta performed in Szeged, a Magyar city
within multiethnic royal Hungary; Magyars being the main - or only -
beneficiaries of the 1867 Compromise, apart from Austria proper. Aristocrats
being "disconnected from the people" (meaning the middle class) was a
central plot motif of the genre, and had nothing to do with national issues
or anti-Western feelings. On the contrary, the genre itself was
Austro-Hungarian bicultural, with the foremost Hungarian (Magyar) operetta
composers Lehár and Kálmán using German (Viennese) librettos.
Anyway, the 1910 elections meant a return to Austro-Magyar cooperation, and
a crushing defeat for pro-independence nationalists, who had won in 1905 and
proved their incompetence through a series of government crises,
antagonizing the ethnic minorities. I think it doesn't come down from the
context that it was Budapest where "revolutionary activities" took place,
while the nationalist party's attempts at forced Magyarizing might have led
to the Karánsebes riots, reported by NYTimes, as that was a town with a
mostly *Romanian* franchise.

János
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