National Dances on the Stage of the Nation: Dances in Franz Doppler’s and Ferenc Erkel’s Operas

Riskó, Kata (2023) National Dances on the Stage of the Nation: Dances in Franz Doppler’s and Ferenc Erkel’s Operas. In: The element of dance in music of the first half of the nineteenth century. Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, pp. 69-109.

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Abstract

For Hungarians, the first half of the nineteenth century was characterised by awakening national identity, and dance was considered to be a means of expressing patriotic emotions. The national ballroom dance which was constructed on the basis of European models and the csárdás of real folk origins became emblematic dances of the Hungarians. Besides their popularity on the dance floor, they were inserted into stage productions, and, as integrated parts of operas, they became a component of the nascent national art music. In this study, I introduce the Hungarian national dances which were widespread in the 1840s and analyse, through the operas and folk plays of the most significant nineteenth-century Hungarian opera composer, Ferenc Erkel, and to a lesser extent Franz Doppler, how these dances were used in Hungarian stage music. Although Erkel composed settings with folk tunes for several popular plays, folk elements and popular dances were inserted into his operas much more gradually. Franz Doppler’s highly successful comic opera Ilka was a milestone in integrating the csárdás and, in general, folk-like tunes into Hungarian operas. In addition to Doppler’s works, contemporary European operas may have encouraged Erkel to use popular dance and local folk-like elements for dramatic purposes. While the csárdás occurs in his comic opera Sarolta in a really folkish version, in a rural scene displaying a folk dance of village people, it plays a role in his tragic grand opera Bánk bán not only as a dance episode but as a means of portraying the unstable mental state of the heroine.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Hungary, national opera, Ferenc Erkel, Franz Doppler, csárdás
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music / zene, szövegkönyvek, kották > M1 Music / zene M Music and Books on Music / zene, szövegkönyvek, kották > M1 Music / zene > M10 Theory and philosophy of music / zeneelmélet, muzikológia M Music and Books on Music / zene, szövegkönyvek, kották > M1 Music / zene > M11 Kinds of music / zenei műfajok M Music and Books on Music / zene, szövegkönyvek, kották > ML Literature of music / zeneirodalom, zeneművek
Depositing User:	Kata Riskó
Date Deposited:	07 Sep 2026 07:05
Last Modified:	07 Sep 2026 07:05
URI:	https://real.mtak.hu/id/eprint/235297

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