Review: Rudolf in Budapest, 15 January 2009

[valancystar]

What with the Vienna premiere of Rudolf approaching, I thought some people might be interested to read my review of the Budapest production. This is a slightly edited and shortened version of what I posted in magyar_musicals last month. I discuss both the musical in general and the Budapest production in particular. These are naturally just my opinions and

Comments

[valancystar]

I don't buy the love-sickness and never did. Elisabeth the musical has it down pretty well, for all that Rudolf's story is rather briefly treated there. He was sick, deeply depressed, ignored by his parents and frustrated politically, felt life offered nothing for him and wanted to get away, but was afraid to die alone. Mary came in when neither his wife nor his long-term mistress Mizzi Caspar (his real love from all I can tell) would die with him. Mary was stupid enough to do that and he became briefly infatuated with her because her adoration of him was charming. So much for the romance. I have issues with the idea of Rudolf's fate having been anything but the double suicide, because hardly anything could have been more damaging to the House of Habsburg than what did come to light: that Rudolf was messed up enough to kill himself and his teenaged mistress. Also, there's a considerable amount of evidence that Rudolf did want to die. The problem is that Taaffe and Franz-Joseph had much of the evidence destroyed and so we'll never know for sure what happened. But it doesn't seem to me like there's enough reason to believe it was anything else.

If he was just inspired by the book to write a love story (funny, that, considering Morton's book has an extremely cynical view on Mary and the relationship) I don't see why he goes around saying the musical is based on Morton's book.

[fantasmadaopera]

(Uh...by the way...I fear I bring some bad news...Kétség és ábránd was cuted.>=( I just heard the entire show and it's no were. It was apparently the only song cuted apart from Pfeiffer's...=\)

[valancystar]

Oh, they might as well, I wasn't exactly looking forward to hearing/seeing Uwe butcher it. Though getting German lyrics to it would have been cool.

[ventresaintgris]

hi, I was in vienna last sunday and I went to see the musical. I pretty much agree with valancystar review, although my german is soo poor that I was scarcely able to catch a few words from "du bist meine welt", and so I was saved from dealing with the sappiness :-)

One question, though: I don't seem to be able to get a coherent on line translation of "ketseg es abrand". What does the title mean, what's the song about and who sings it? Maybe I could help you "locate it" in the vienna version?