Stephen, the King: A Rock Opera in the Late Communist Period and Questions of National Identity (2024)

Stephen I, the First Christian King of Hungary: From Medieval Myth to Modern Legend

Nora Berend

Published:

2024

Online ISBN:

9780191995439

Print ISBN:

9780198889342

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Stephen I, the First Christian King of Hungary: From Medieval Myth to Modern Legend

Nora Berend

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Nora Berend

Nora Berend

Professor of European History

University of Cambridge

,

UK

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Pages

69–128

  • Published:

    May 2024

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Berend, Nora, 'Stephen, the King: A Rock Opera in the Late Communist Period and Questions of National Identity', Stephen I, the First Christian King of Hungary: From Medieval Myth to Modern Legend (Oxford, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 6 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191995439.003.0003, accessed 25 May 2024.

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Abstract

Demonstrating how myth laundered into history continued to be reshaped in the twentieth century and beyond, this chapter takes up the story of Stephen and Koppány represented in a rock opera in 1983. Backed by a historical advisor, the creators of the rock opera offered a heavily mythical story that was understood as a real reconstruction of historical events. It gained immediate popularity, seen by many as expressing opposition to the late communist regime. Yet it also gained the authorities’ approval, whether as a safety valve or an apotheosis of the regime. Read by many as the story of the 1956 revolution, Stephen the King also reflected the struggles around national identity in the last years of the communist regime, and, through yearly performances and reinterpretations, beyond. The rock opera has been immensely successful in propagating its vision of Hungarian history as a true reconstruction, and sparked further elaborations of mythical history, catapulting Koppány into the role of national hero.

Keywords: János Kádár, Imre Nagy, 1956 Hungarian revolution, communism, rock music, 1989 fall of communism, national identity

Subject

Political History Medieval and Renaissance History (500 to 1500) Mythology and Folklore Eastern European History

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

© Nora Berend 2024

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