Kádár's Record / The Last Speech of Kádár

On 12 April 1989, at a closed session of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP), János Kádár appeared unexpectedly (and uninvited) to deliver his seemingly chaotic final speech. His rambling, often almost incoherent address bends under the weight of past crimes, and amid the many silences and evasions, reality seeps through with all its horror. Behind the authentic historical text, reminiscent of Shakespearean plays, a “set” is constructed from a cantata by Schönberg to make it clear: history is the cruellest and most just of directors. In 2016, for the 60th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, historian and documentary filmmaker Tamás Novák staged his chamber drama based on the book János Kádár’s Last Speech by Mihály Kornis. This production is being reimagined ten years later, and by moving from the basement of the Opera House to the spacious stage of the Eiffel Art Studios, it is to grow into a true theatrical performance.

On the 70th anniversary of the revolution, in the first part of the production, the audience – before they can once again witness the struggle raging in the confused mind of the country’s former leader and his battle with his ghosts – can get to know another face of Kádár through the documentary film Kádár’s Record. Produced by the OPERA and directed by Tamás Novák, the film is based on a pseudo-documentary screenplay by graphic artist István Orosz and is set to the musical atmosphere created by Gábor Csiki, director of the OPERA Chorus. Its subject is a peculiar phonograph record from János Kádár’s estate, on which a Schumann–Heine ballad takes on special significance, leading first to the murder of tsar’s family and then back to the reprisals of 1956. The film is to be screened in the largest and best-equipped cinema hall in Hungary, the Bánffy Stage of the OPERA’s Eiffel Art Studios, with Dolby Atmos sound technology.