By Alex Gordon in Haifa, Israel
Emmerich (Imre) Kálmán, one of the greatest operetta composers, was born in 1882 in Siófok (Austria-Hungary, now Hungary), on the shores of Lake Balaton, into a Jewish family. Kálmán’s father, Károly Koppstein, was a grain merchant and contractor. Mother, Paula Singer, a kind-hearted and creative woman, lived to see her son gain international fame. Kálmán was born the third child in the family. There were six children in the family. Imre (after moving to Vienna, Emmerich) Koppstein changed his surname to Kálmán during his high school years. He received his primary education at a small Jewish school, where one teacher taught all the subjects. The Jewish school in Siófok had a very good reputation, and Christian parents also gladly sent their children there.
Kálmán studied piano, but due to arthritis in his fingers, he switched to composition. He graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where Béla Bartók, Albert Szirmai, and Zoltán Kodály were his classmates. On the advice of his friend, composer Viktor Jacobi, Kálmán decided to try writing operettas. His very first operetta, “Autumn Maneuvers” (1908), was enthusiastically received by the public and was staged in Vienna, New York, and London.
In 1908, Kálmán moved to Vienna, where he solidified his success with the operetta “The Gypsy Baron” (1912).
In 1922, the Austrian writer of Jewish descent Hugo Bettauer published the satirical dystopian novel The City Without Jews, in which he warned the residents of Vienna about the danger of antisemitism for their city. The book went through 47 editions in seven languages. Bettauer ironically remarked: “The people have chosen a political savior, Dr. Karl Schwertfeger from the Christian Social Party.” The writer was referring to Karl Lueger, an antisemite who was mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910. In 1899, Lueger delivered a memorable antisemitic speech in which he said that “the Jews have created ‘inconceivable terrorism’ against the masses thru control of capital and the press.” He emphasized that the goal should be to “liberate Christian nations from Jewish domination.” In another instance, he noted that “Jews are predatory beasts in human form” and that “antisemitism will disappear when the last Jew dies.”
The Nazis called Bettauer the “Red Poet.”
Calls for “radical self-help” and “Lynch law against the desecrators of our people” appeared in right-wing publications. On March 27, 1925, The New York Times published a report that began as follows: “VIENNA, March 26.-Hugo Bettauer, former New York newspaper man, died this morning of the wounds he received recently when shot by Otto Rothstock, a student of dental surgery. Bettauer, who had published a weekly here advocating advanced views on sex and other matters, was hated by the German Nationalist element.” He became the first victim of Nazism in Austria. At that time, Kálmán, along with the Jewish librettists Alfred Grünwald and Julius Brammer, created the wonderful operettas “Countess Maritza” (1924) and “The Circus Princess” (1926). The main characters of these operettas were ruined aristocrats, outcasts, Count Tassilo and Mister X, respectively. Both hide from the contemptuous and hostile society, Tassilo in the village, and Mister X under the black mask of a circus performer. Both sing about loneliness and their alienation from the world. In the operetta, everything ends well, but the drama of the lives of these outsiders resembles the isolation, suffering, and persecution experienced by the three authors of these operettas as Viennese Jews. The music of both operettas is permeated with the drama and experiences of the difficult fate of its main characters, and perhaps even their authors. At times, it resembles the deep emotionality of klezmer music. Not only Mister X wears a mask, but the music of these operettas is also disguised as cheerful melodies. Even in deep mourning, Kálmán created joy and cheerfulness in his music. Back in 1915, while working on his masterpiece “The Csárdás Princess (Silva),” Kálmán received the tragic news of the death of his older brother Béla. Despite this heavy personal loss, which was the first of many he would have to endure, Kálmán continued to compose and completed work on this, one of the most famous and cheerful Viennese operettas.
Hungarian-Romani intonations are recognizable in the music of Franz Liszt, who used the so-called “Gypsy scale” with an augmented second, and in Kálmán’s music for his operettas “Countess Maritza” and “The Circus Princess.” The augmented second is one of the most characteristic features of Ashkenazi Eastern European Jewish music, especially in the klezmer style and in the style of Jewish cantorial music.
The Jewish social and musical subtext is hidden in the operetta “The Circus Princess.” Mister X from this operetta is a classic outcast figure. He is a nobleman stripped of his inheritance and name, forced to hide his face under a mask in the circus, which makes him despised by high society but a romantic hero striving to restore his honor. When Mister X, risking his life, plays a sad melody under the circus dome, the cheerful ending of his act casts doubt on the joy he feels. He is a sad clown who, as is customary among Jews, “laughs under tears.”
When three Jews—a composer and two writers—write a lighthearted operetta at the peak of antisemitism, one must take a close look at how they create their work and consider whether it might be an example of the “laughter under tears” so characteristic of Jews. When three Jews in a troubled, hostile-to-their-people Vienna put on a jester’s cap and write an operetta with a happy ending, one might think they were indulging in wishful thinking or trying to drown their fears, to dissolve their worries in the desired joy. According to Kálmán himself, “I was like a man who fell from the sky—a very serious and very sad young man.”
The uncertainty about his future and the constant expectation of misfortunes that could befall him and his family, Kálmán inherited from his persecuted Jewish ancestors. He felt the fragility of everything he had and feared losing his well-being at any moment. He was oppressed by Viennese antisemitism. He masked his sadness and melancholy with the gaiety, humor, and laughter of the Jewish shtetls, which belonged to him along with the dreams of escaping from them. “Laughter under tears”: this phrase is used to characterize his work, implying a deeply rooted melancholy coexisting with the joyful, lively melodies of his music—this theme is explored in Stefan Frey’s book Laughter under Tears: Emmerich Kálmán (2014). Kálmán biographer Frey wrote of the composer’s tendency to alternate musical moods between “tears and laughter, ecstasy and melancholy,” which became his hallmark, increasingly so as his compositional career blossomed. Kálmán’s music, despite its popularity and dance rhythms, is known for its “melancholic waltzes.” His life was marked by significant stresses, including the hardships of World War I, the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the necessity of fleeing from the Nazis after the Anschluss of Austria and Germany in 1938 due to his Jewish heritage, first from Vienna to Paris, and then to the United States.
The composer’s wife, Vera Kálmán, in her book Mein Leben mit Emmerich Kalman (My Life with Emmerich Kálmán). Hestia-Verlag, Bayreuth, 1966, confirms his ability to bring joy and cheerfulness into his work while simultaneously enduring misfortunes: “He was deeply shaken by the death of his older brother Béla, and then his father fell ill: diabetes offered no glimmer of hope for recovery – such was the medical verdict.
Kálmán’s friend Paula Dvořák (she was ten years older than Emmerich) lost her parents at the beginning of the war and herself became a victim of an incurable disease, which confined her to a wheelchair for the rest of her days. As is well known, the best remedy for melancholy is work. The miracle did not make itself wait this time either: as he filled one staff line after another, Emmerich forgot about everything in the world. It was during this period that he created his most vivid, fiery melodies.” The composer’s emotional state can be described with the words from Canio’s aria in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera ‘Pagliacci’:
Laugh, Clown, and entertain everyone!
You must hide your sobs and tears with a joke,
And beneath the funny grimace, the torments of hell…
Laugh and cry over your sorrow!
In 1945, Kálmán learned that his sisters Ilona and Emilia had been killed by the Nazis in 1944. His daughter Yvonne said, “For my father, it was a terrible time. His works were widely performed, he himself was very popular − and in one day all of this changed. My father was a very humble and hardworking man, he enjoyed life every day, and then in an instant, he was trampled. My father was terribly distressed because he knew nothing about the fate of his family. His brothers and sisters, as well as their children, perished in concentration camps. It’s terrible! On the day the father learned about their fate, he had a stroke from which he never recovered.”
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Alex Gordon is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education, and the author of 12 books