Erkel: Hunyadi László (Ladislaus Hunyadi)
A Hungarian opera with libretto in Hungarian by Egressy Béni, based on a play by Tóth Lőrinc (Hunyadi László : történeti dráma öt szakaszban [Hunyadi László: a historical drama of five acts])
Fear not, for I also do not know how to pronounce Hunyadi’s name as it’s Hungarian. Notice that Hungarian names are written in Last, First order instead of the Westernized First, Last — so Laszlo’s family name is Hunyadi (his dad, a very famous warrior and noble, is called Hunyadi János — romanized to be John Hunyadi).
Because this opera is quite obscure, here’s a synopsis that Wikipedia couldn’t give you. Hunyadi Laszlo is the main protagonist, and his dad died before the opera began. There is a guy called Ulrik, who hated the Hunyadis and is an advisor and the uncle to the king, also called Laszlo (for convenience we will call him Ladislaus, his romanized name). Ulrik and Ladislaus visits the Hunyad castle and the Hunyadi kinsmen didn’t let their mercenaries into the castle, and Ladislaus is scared about his safety. Taking this opportunity Ulrik convinced Ladislaus to kill the Hunyadi kinsmen — but before that Rozgonyi, a shady guy in the court told this to Laszlo, and Ulrik was murdered. Ladislaus pretended to forgive Laszlo and fell in love with his fiancé Maria, later persuading Maria’s dad to give him her hand instead. Then he got Laszlo arrested for conspiring against the crown and chopped his head off — it was a brutal and crazy execution because Laszlo’s head fell off only at the fourth chop.
Hunyadi Laszlo is one of the firsts in the history of Hungarian opera, because Erkel chose to write it in his own language rather than Italian or German — like Bánk Bán, another Hungarian opera in Hungarian. Language here matters a lot, for it represents a wave of pseudo-nationalism that breezed over Central Europe towards the east (Hungary, Czech and Poland) and sweeping towards Russia that ended the dominance of Italian or German operas in these countries in the 19th Century. That was also around the time when society started shuffling (post-French revolution) and re-shuffling (neo-absolutism) and the new dominance became middle class people living midst the cities, in the action. These groups were not familiar with Italian, unlike the noble class, and later on with the rise of Wagner and Weber’s operas — if they are not living in areas of what we now call Austria and Germany, German. Because there aren’t any subtitle machines like we do now, it is only normal that they prefer pastimes in their own tongue rather than guessing what is happening on the stage. This is why some music anthropologists would argue that this shift in operatic languages in some countries aren’t really an organic part of the nationalism movement.
That is a background, and simply taking all operas written in their own tongue in this period of time as products of nationalism wouldn’t do them justice. As a result, the framework that musicologists now give, the term ‘national opera’ covers different variants for interpretation as a nexus of countries’ culture and sociological construct. For example, an analysis of Hunyadi Laszlo would cover the fact that it was one of the firsts in the country (and Erkel being the pioneer of using the Hungarian language in a libretto), as well as the source of the opera. Now we have briefly talked about the language aspect, we might as well move on to the source: Magyar history. I used the term Magyar here because the Hungarians themselves are proud of themselves being descendants of Magyars (ancient fierce warriors near the Danube) — this was also featured in the opera.
When Ulrik (the advisor) tried to convince King Ladislaus to kill Laszlo, he call him and the Hunyadi kinsmen ‘the dirty Wallachians’, and when he dies, he cursed them saying ‘to hell with the Magyars!’. These hints suggests that there is quite a us-versus-them mentality as portrayed by the characters, and by extension for the composer (and librettist) as well.
King Ladislaus V “the Posthumous” was the son of Albert of Habsburg, King of the Romans (the ‘co-empreror’ to the Holy Roman Empire), Duke of Austria, and through marriage the King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia. While Ladislaus was quite involved in Hungarian politics, his dad was not. So for the Magyars (and their descendants, including Erkel), the Habsburgs were the foreigners; meanwhile for the Habsburgs, the Magyars were just their subordinates. Ladislaus also didn’t inherit his dad’s title as King of the Romans, so he was only the king of Hungary. This was also why when he whimpers or speaks to himself, he does it in German (although not sure it was Erkel’s setting on the score or did this production stay so true to history).
Remember Ulrik? He was actually a regent for Ladislaus, known as Ulrich II, Count of Celje. Now the Princely County of Celje was not ‘just’ Slovenia we know today, with that he could claim to be a king as well! The backstory was that Ulrik in the opera hates the House of Hunyadi because they prevented him from getting the throne of Bosnia (i.e. one step to be king). And then the Hunyadis hate Ulrik because when they were fighting back Turkish invasion Ulrik just sat back and relax, so a lot of Hungarians died during the process — including Laszlo’s dad. So there was a lot of hate going on between the characters unseen.
That said, it all boils down to unrequited love and probably Ulrik’s murder (hurts for Ladislaus because he respects his uncle — in the opera) that propels Ladislaus to give Laszlo the chop. I don’t know medieval Hungarian history enough to tell you if there should be other ulterior motives for Ladislaus’s act, but at least in this opera, Ladislaus’s portrayal as this weak and stupid king that takes his loyal servant’s wife and his life tells you something about how the Hungarians view of their Habsburg neighbours.
Cite as: Bachmanov, G. (August 20, 2023). Erkel: Hunyadi László (Ladislaus Hunyadi): A Hungarian opera with libretto in Hungarian by Egressy Béni, based on a play by Tóth Lőrinc. Opera of the Day. https://operaoftheday.medium.com/erkel-hunyadi-l%C3%A1szl%C3%B3-ladislaus-hunyadi-5d85d8d286a2
