John the Valiant
Details
In Brief
“Such a wonderful tale. Pongrác Kacsóh followed in the tracks of the poet without wiping off the butterfly wing scale with rough hands; his fantastic, gorgeous music is distinctly different from any operetta we have heard before with its Hungarian motives and genuine folk style”, reports on the 1904 premier of John the Valiant the newspaper called Újság. It might sound incredible, but the title role was played by the great prima donna Sári Fedák. “When I had sung ‘A single rose says it better’, the fate of the work was sealed. Everyone was crying in the audience, and I cried with them.” There was hardly a season since its opera house premier in 1931 when it was not included in the programme. With John the Valiant, the OPERA honoured the 200th anniversary of Sándor Petőfi’s birth in 2023.
Parental guidance
Events
Premiere: March 10, 2023
Synopsis
Act I
Hussars arrive in the village to recruit lads. A war has broken out, the Turks attacked France, and the legion of hussars are going into battle to aid the King of France. The tricolour flag is brought in for the girls to adorn it with ribbons. Bagó appears, who is hopelessly in love with Iluska, the most beautiful maiden in the village, and leads the hussars to her to adorn the Hungarian flag. The poor orphaned girl is tortured by her evil stepmother, her only happiness is the love of another orphan, the handsome shepherd boy, Johnny Corn. However, the evil stepmother hires the hayward to drive Johnny's flock out of bounds and call for the people of the village. Johnny must escape. He says goodbye to his Iluska, enlists as a hussar, and goes to see the world. Still, he promises Iluska he will never forget her and will come back for her from a hundred deaths.
Act II
The French royal court is filled with excitement while Bartolo, master of the court, monitors the battle situation through his spy-glass and relays it to the princess. Leading his hussars, Johnny Corn arrives and drives the Turks away. The king names him John the Valiant for his heroism and offers him half his kingdom and his daughter's hand in gratitude. The sound of a flute is heard, Bagó arrives with the sad news: Iluska was tortured to death by her evil stepmother. He has brought a rose from Iluska's grave as a memento. With a broken heart, Johnny says goodbye to the French court and sets off with Bagó to visit Iluska in death.
Act III
The wanderings of Johnny and Bagó lead them to the Lake of Life, where they hear a strange rustling of wings. The evil stepmother tries to lure them away from the lake in the form of an ugly witch, but Bagó recognizes her, and Johnny throws the rose torn from Iluska's grave into the Lake of Life. Flowers and roses emerge from the lake, and Fairyland appears with the fairy queen: Iluska. The two lovers happily embrace each other, Bagó bids them farewell and asks for Johnny's flute. Iluska persuades her loved one to stay with her in Fairyland forever. Johnny agrees, the ceremony begins, but Johnny's heart is aching for his homeland. He hears the sound of flute, he longs to go to the village again, home to beautiful Hungary. Iluska runs after Johnny, and they arrive home embracing each other, united in eternal love.
Media
Reviews
"And although the Opera does not advertise it as a children's performance, our first impression of Máté Szabó's direction is that it is indeed a children's performance, and the treatment of the prose contributes significantly to this. (...) In the case of John the valiant, the heart-shaped soutache on the hussars' uniforms simultaneously represents his love for Iluska and the love he felt for his village. That is why it comes as no surprise that he is ready to leave Fairyland to return home. And all of this is realized so naturally in Máté Szabó's direction that we don't think it could happen any other way."
Péter Jenei, Pótszékfoglaló
“In the first act, Máté Szabó still preserves the play’s original period and setting, although by depicting the flock of sheep guarded by Jancsi Kukorica individually on sheets of paper, he also gives a nod toward the child audience, which always demands a pinch of modernity. The well-animated projected backdrop has a similar effect on this age group. (…) In the second act (…) by presenting the court of the French king, the stage design already projects a completely different period, a distinct era, before the audience. The costumes used here evoke the atmosphere of the 1950s outright; compared to what came before, the riot of colors and the fairy-tale quality receive far greater emphasis. (…) The director’s intention to use symbols also enters the production, and by the third act these are present in considerable abundance.”
Orsolya Ráth, Deszkavízió
Opera guide
Where impossible desires turn into possible – The director’s thoughts
John the Valiant is about the impossibility of getting home in the deepest sense, and then about its wonderful realization. About who we really are. About the fact that a Hungarian hussar who goes all the way to becoming the king of France is in fact an orphan boy driven from his village, who even ventures into the realm of darkness for his love. What kind of home is it where we cannot be together with the one we love? What is it like to live in a place where neither the people nor the place are what we are looking for? Or when the environment of coexistence is friendly, yet alien? When being together does not bring completeness, and the lack of it ends only when we finally get back to where we were driven away from. Our most human struggle is to make the realization of our inalienable desires from impossible to possible. John the Valiant is about this painful complexity, resounding with extraordinary kindness and humour. About the endless longing for love-filled, self-identified social life and its achievement. In the absence of this completeness, existence anywhere and with anyone is meaningless and unliveable.
Máté Szabó
The original version
Although John the Valiant has been performed more than 700 times at the Ybl Palace and the Erkel Theatre since its Opera House premiere in 1931, the 2023 production offers a real musical treat even to those who know the work well. The original orchestration, the work of composer Zsigmond Vincze, conductor of the 1904 world premiere at the Royal Theatre, had never been performed at the Hungarian State Opera. For the premiere at the Opera House, Ákos Buttykay, primarily known as a composer of operettas, made new arrangements for the Singspiel. In 1949, the Hungarian State Opera staged a new production for the City (today's Erkel) Theatre, and due to the size and acoustics of the venue, conductor/composer Jenő Kenessey was commissioned with making a new orchestration. His version of the music was performed for nearly four decades. In 1987, conductor István Dénes created a new orchestral score, then the production returned to Kenessey’s version in the last two decades.
For the OPERA's new production, conductor Márton Rácz – who, as part of the Art Scholarship program of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, has already published three epochal works such as Mike the Magnate, Baroness Lili, and Miss Springtime – has reconstructed the 1904 orchestration of John the Valiant based on original manuscripts at the request of the institution. Kacsóh's manuscript piano score and the orchestral parts of the first performances came into the possession of the conductor expert in the piece fifteen years ago. It included several – but not irreparable – gaps in the scores for the orchestral parts. They have been restored almost completely by comparing the existing scores published later and the references to the orchestration in the piano score from 1904, with the exception of the harp part, which was developed by Márton Rácz himself based on the sources.