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Subjective preface
I already wrote earlier than that my life in Budapest started on the József Katona Theater, the place I labored as a cleaner. In each approach, this atmosphere was an incredible college for an eighteen-year-old lady from the countryside. I skilled to be an actor, and I can not say that I used to be happy with what I skilled behind the scenes in what was undeniably the most effective theater within the nation on the time.
In fact, I additionally noticed Mária Ronyecz many instances, even up shut. Outdoors the stage, he continually smoked, lit from one cigarette to a different, and steadily raised his glass. Perhaps he was by no means drunk, however he was continually “floating”.
She was an amazingly nice actress, a real tragedy, the sort of which few are born. He was given solely forty-five years, however he skilled as a lot struggling throughout that point as he did in another hundred years.
He grew up together with his grandparents
He was born in Kunágota on June 25, 1944, and went to elementary college there, whereas his mother and father have been attempting to get by in Budapest within the Fifties. We do not know a lot about his childhood, however it’s fairly sure that the fixed absence of his mother and father could have been a severe trauma for him in his early years.
It isn’t doable to elucidate to a toddler with logic why his mother and father don’t dwell with him, why he spends his on a regular basis life together with his grandparents within the southern tip of the nation. He was lastly in a position to go to secondary college in Budapest, graduating from Lajos Kossuth Industrial Technical School. It quickly grew to become clear how proficient he was, he recited many instances at numerous occasions. After commencement, he was admitted to the Theater and Movie Academy, however Zoltán Várkonyi didn’t belief him, so he labored as an English-speaking export-import accountant at Transelektro Electrical energy Commerce Firm for nearly a 12 months, and within the meantime he was a member of the novice theater firm of the FMH (Fővárosi Műlvödési Ház).
Supply: Fortepan / János Kende
Lastly, he joined Ottó Ádám’s class the next 12 months: László Dózsa, Zsuzsa Liska, Annamária Szilvássy, István Uri, András Márton, Tünde Szabó, László Vajda and László Joós have been his classmates, and he acquired his appearing diploma in 1967.
“I felt like a fly caught in a vinegar horseradish…”
He believed himself to be a “grey mouse” in school, and later stated: “I felt like a fly caught in a vinegar horseradish…”
He didn’t imagine that he was attention-grabbing sufficient, proficient sufficient, stunning sufficient, though he was given alternatives, however he might by no means regain the self-confidence he had misplaced in childhood, it doesn’t matter what he performed and irrespective of how a lot recognition he acquired. Whilst a school pupil, he was inspired by Mária Sulyok, who was an actual outdated girl within the theater world and really hardly ever met her to encourage newbies. She felt the tragedy in him, as a result of he was too.
Ronyecz’s fights are additionally characterised by the equally legendary case when, as a freshman, he appeared in The Trojan Girls on the Szeged Outside Video games. After one of many performances, he approached Zoltán Latinovits and requested him: “Zoli, will I develop into an actor…?” And Latinovits replied: “It will not be… it already is…”
Throughout his appearing internship in Madách, because of his one-sentence position, he was in a position to tour the world performing the “Beggar’s Opera”, one thing that fairly a couple of folks had the chance to do on the finish of the sixties.
The troupe traveled from Moscow to Turin, and he at all times stated solely this on stage: “However you are laughing unusually, Jenny…”
Destiny compensated him later, as a result of within the Nationwide, in 1981, he might already be the title character: Kocsma Jenny. It was performed in a distinct translation below the title Opera in Three Acts, however it was the identical play: sure, he laughed unusually and sang heartbreakingly, directed by Yuri Lyubimov in a cult efficiency.
After three years in Pécs, Budapest
After school, he bought a contract in Pécs and likewise plenty of alternatives. As an actor from Pécs, on the age of solely 24, he performed the position of Gertrudis within the tv adaptation of Bánk bán, directed by Miklós Szinetár. This isn’t an on a regular basis probability for a profession newbie enjoying within the countryside, since at the moment virtually the entire nation adopted the TV video games, so the face, title and voice of Mária Ronyecz shortly grew to become recognized.
Recording of the TV model of Katona József Bánk bánk drama within the MTV studio. Zoltán Latinovits as Bánk and Mária Ronyecz as Gertrudis – Supply: Fortepan / Zoltán Szalay
(Theater-going members of my technology have been nonetheless conscious of precisely how nice an actress she was, however nobody at WMN, for instance, knew who she was at first once I indicated that I wish to write an article for the eightieth anniversary of her delivery.)
He was in a position to play about twenty roles on this quick time in Pécs, adopted by twelve years within the Nationwide, the place he was additionally given important roles, though it was throughout that interval that the previous director, Tamás Main, and his successor, Endre Marton, fought with one another. I wrote about this a couple of years in the past.
Orphan Kata Bethlen
Within the mid-seventies, a number of monodramas gained the popularity of the viewers: Mari Szemes shone as Médea, and Éva Ruttkai shone as Lotte alone on stage. In 1975, Ronyecz additionally got here up with an unheard-of monodrama: Kata Árva Bethlen, which he carried out within the Royal Cellar of the Buda Fort.
Ronyecz, who hardly ever speaks, talked at size about this position with Anna Földes, it’s value it to learn your mature ideashis accountable and aware perspective, his doubts and the slight pleasure that the unanimous skilled and public success gave him.
To place it mildly, it was not tough for him to determine with orphanhood.
By the way in which, he as soon as stated, when requested about his appearing desires, that he does not have one: “I even play the chair leg, that is why I grew to become an actor”.
Motion pictures in all portions
We noticed Mária Ronyecz in many various movies, she performed in Sevasz, Vera! within the well-known movie show and likewise in Füyok a téren. Love Emília Ódor! I additionally liked her position as a nun within the Sándor Pál film. In Gothár–Bereményi’s movie Megáll az vítá, it was surprising how she introduced the ill-fated trainer “Pickleface” to life.
Within the film Bespectacled, he truly bought to put on his iconic glasses, one thing he hardly ever bought to do on stage. Ultimately, she even appeared within the tv collection Linda within the position of a detective who’s drawn to the humanities and isn’t appropriate for investigations, this was her final movie look.
Within the TV collection Linda – Supply: Hungarian Tv
Large roles in Katona
Many individuals from the Nemzeti left with him (for instance Hilda Gobbi and Main Tamás) in 1982 from the previous chamber theater of the Nemzeti to the József Katona Theater, based by Gábor Székely and Gábor Zsámbéki.
This was his final firm the place he performed till his dying, and he was actually surrounded by an mental atmosphere that he had at all times missed.
I’ve solely seen him dwell right here, Schwajda (Saint household) and Spiro (Rooster head) he additionally excelled in his performs. I additionally watched Coriolanus many instances. In her final position, she appeared as a dying spouse in Elias Canetti’s Marriage ceremony. The efficiency was eerie and harrowing as a result of whereas enjoying the dying spouse, she was actually dying and actually turning into a spouse once more.
An odd love
When it turned out that she was incurable, and the most cancers virtually devoured her whole jaw, Péter Gál Molnár, the brazenly homosexual, feared theater critic, remarried Mária Ronyecz and nursed her persistently till her dying.
That they had been married and divorced as soon as earlier than, however the unusual emotional bond between them was by no means damaged. It was rumored that Ronyecz was truly drawn to girls, however he by no means admitted it. Alternatively, an alibi relationship got here in useful for MGP, as a result of he was changed into an informant, persecuted and blackmailed by the system for being drawn to his personal intercourse.
MGP was an especially divisive determine in Hungarian cultural public life, both liked or hated. His vitriolic fashion and sharp language have been at all times able to reply when somebody objected to considered one of his criticisms. THE Popping out in his ebook, printed after his dying, the next testimony could be examine their relationship:
“I am out of fresh shirts. Ronyecz supplied to clean. We went to the toilet. The shirts remained unwashed.”
This ardour belonged to just one girl all through MGP’s life, and that was Mária Ronyecz.
That is how Mihály Kornis wrote in Litera in his weblog About Mária Ronyecz and her love affair with MGP – lengthy after their dying, in 2018:
“Mari, what did you drink for? Earlier than you bought sick, let’s name it that, if I noticed you in an actor’s bar or in a TV present, from the nook of the room, wherever, often for weeks in a foggy state, after that my soul wandered round you, you went forwards and backwards in my head. […] You can be in huge bother if Péter Molnár Gál grew to become the I-don’t-know-what. Your curse on your self.
“I perceive, you perceive, that is the way you perceive that I do not perceive, however you perceive.”
You performed MGP’s spouse, let all of the seventy-seven dwarves, all the administrators I really feel like imagine me, as quickly as you keep in mind that you’re a hopeless case…”
The tip is right here, it by no means ends…
The determine and voice of Mária Ronyecz dwell on right here though she has already moved to the afterlife 35 years in the past.
I can not do away with the thought that each one this struggling might have been prevented if his mother and father had determined to not let him develop up together with his grandparents, however to take him in and cherish him each blessed day.
He was in search of this cherishing all his life, and subsequently he was not in a position to come to phrases with himself. Sadly, the self-destructive way of life quickly took its toll. But he might have shone in so many different fantastic roles!
He left within the fullness of his energy, within the prime of his life, and it’s for nothing that Attila József says so touchingly superbly You’re going to get outdated his poem, he might by no means develop outdated, and he might by no means be uncloudedly younger…
Sources: ITT, ITT, ITT, ITT, ITT and ITT
Featured picture: Fortepan / Zoltán Szalay
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