Paul Abraham, Viktoria und ihr Husar (1930)

I'm using the German title because that's what's on the DVD case, but there's no good reason for it, given that this is sung and spoken in Hungarian. Paul Abraham is also the composer of Roxy und ihr Wunderteam, an operetta about soccer, and I can't believe I never wrote about it, because it is truly one of the most delightful things ever--definitely my favorite operetta.

This is an earlier work. Koltay and Jancsi are Hungarian prisoners of war of the Russians, who are going to be executed, but escape to Japan where they take refuge at the American embassy. The American ambassador, John Cunlight, has married Koltay's fiancée Viktoria, having thought him killed in the war. There's also another couple, Viktoria's brother Count Ferry and Lia San (a somewhat unfortunate Japanese caricature), and Jancsi becomes involved with a chambermaid, Riquette. The household is going to travel to Russia, and they invite the Hungarians to go with them; from there, they can return to their home country. Viktoria admits that she's still in love with Kotay, but he gets taken by the Russians, who still want to execute him. Later, we're a Hungarian village, where there's a tradition that three--no less than three--couples must get married for some sort of ceremony. So Jancsi and Riquette are to be married, and Count Ferry and Lia San re-married, and Cunlight shows up to (maybe?) remarry Viktoria, but then Kotay, her true love, having received some kind of vague amnesty, appears and Cunlight is I guess going off to Washington.

This is somewhat more serious than Roxy; it's still largely frivolous, but there is the pathos of Cunlight, a wholly sympathetic character, losing his wife. Also, in Roxy, the title character is a skirt role, which automatically adds a large element of goofiness. Roxy features a mixture of folk and jazz elements, but the latter are absent here; the music mostly consisting of Hungarian folk (though there's one number that I would swear is, let's say, heavily inspired by the American folk standard "Goodnight, Irene"). The music is a bit less immediate than Roxy's, and I won't say I like the operetta as a whole quite as much, but it's still a lot of fun. I'd had it in my sights for a while, but it's out-of-print, and in the past, the only available pre-owned copies were going for three figures, and I wasn't quite that determined to see it. But now it can be had for a lot cheaper (as of this writing.  No future guarantees). The video is not exactly DVD-quality, but it'll do.

Of course, now I just want to see Abraham's other operettas, dammit, but none of them seem to have been recorded anywhere. Alas! What a tragic destiny is mine! But who can say what the future holds?