Little when it is in a long history Such a perverse scene was once seen on the stage of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb. The annual awards of the Croatian theater were awarded, and one of the two honorary recognitions for life’s work was given to the Sarajevo opera and operetta diva, a native of Split, who has been spending her retired days in Zagreb since 2007. . Always bright and cheerful, a gorgeous blonde, she marked our childhoods in the seventies and eighties of the last century. She often appeared in television shows, regularly participated in televised New Years celebrations, was one of the more frequent faces on the covers of women’s and television magazines, and in general one of the biggest Bosnian and Yugoslav media stars of her time. and one of the most impressive faces in the history of the spectacle of our self-governing socialism.
Mrs. Gertruda, however, had a dark and dangerous story attached to it. That story began like this: In mid-August 1977, Marshal Tito set off on a trip to Moscow, Pyongyang and Beijing, where he would stay for three full weeks. Daily newspapers will report on it every day, and on television we will watch recordings of his meetings with Bre&zcaronev, Kim Il Sung, Hua Guofeng, and numerous famous and unknown dignitaries. For three weeks, we will testify to our parents every day that his wife Jovanka is not with him, and there is no one to help him while he takes flowers from girls and boys. After all, what did Tito do with all those flowers? But the most intriguing thing of all was that the newspapers and television did not state in a single word what we saw with our eyes. Jovanka seemed to have sunk into the ground, and she was never officially mentioned again, until in May 1980, she appeared in front of Tito’s marble tomb, all crying. But that’s moreć second story. This official non-mention made viewers feel that their biological fathers were turning into an internal enemy. They see something that shouldn’t really be seen.
So, very early, moreć towards the end of the summer of 1977, she started whispering the story that Tito had left Jovanka, and that was because of Gertrude Munita! As an eleven-year-old, I watched and listened as it spread. In the beginning as a form of reconciling our ordinary world with what we see with our own eyes. Or reconciling reality with the fact that there is no official version of that reality. Later, of course, that story will turn into opposition and anti-communist, anti-Tito hate (isn’t it lovely to put this word there?), and Gertrude will also fall victim. The Croatian Wikipedia writes about it in the interesting section: “Her father was sentenced to death by firing squad because of politics and Croatia.” Tito pardoned him. She sang to him 14 times. In the 70s, foreign media declared her Tito’s čs fourth wife. They invited her to America on the condition that next to her name on the poster it was written that she was Tito’s wife. Numerous domestic media presented her as his lover. She denied it several times.”
Is Gertruda Munitić She sang to Tita fourteen times, and what she sang to him, as well as what was the social relationship between the two of them, were they just casual acquaintances or were they secret spouses, or, which is most likely, were they something between the two, we do not know, nor will we ever know. And actually we are not interested. Just as we will not find out whether the legend of Gertrude is indigenous, originated from the people, or was, for example, produced by the State Security Service, the federal one, or the local Bosnian one, in order to have roads and detours under control. popular imagination. But after it has been carried over for years and decades, after it has been cemented with blood and hatred, after it has been confirmed by the collapse of some countries and the rise of other countries, and after it has not gone through serious interpretation and deconstruction, after it has been it was not dealt with by responsible historians, journalists, writers, novelists, that story, despite everything that happened in reality, became the truth.
And then, as casual viewers of the second program of Croatian Television, we become witnesses, and somewhat participants, of that disgusting and perverse scene in which the President of the Croatian Parliament, Gordan Jandroković administered by Gertrude Muniti; “Croatian theater award for all artistic activity in the field of opera”. While doing so, he acts as the emissary of a new Tito, who will appropriate and then pass on in his own name the legend that has become the truth. The opera and operetta singer from Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, winner of the highest honors there from the time of socialism, previously had to be redesigned as a “Croatian opera singer”, which should not have been a problem considering that her birth date was woman in Split, where she sang as a teenager, and that when she was very young she was shorter engaged in Osijek theater as well. But we will deal with all of this easily, only if there is a good will for reparation of the past in the name of the future. As well as for political abuse, of course.
This year’s Croatian acting awards ceremony reminded us of the darkest nineties. The theater was turned into HDZ’s party stage, where along with Jandrokovi, HDZ’s minister of culture and party activist Nina Obuljen-Koržinek, HDZ’s candidate for mayor of Zagreb, partyč ka činovnica and foreignčka personnel in diplomacy Iva Hraste Sočo, which according to losing the election, appointed to the position of the intendant of the Croatian National Theatre. According to the script, the actors were accompanied by Croatian athletes during the nominations and awards, medal winners at the Olympic Games, among which some of the most prominent members of the HDZ leadership would once again be found. But even in those who are not, first-class Hadeze patriotism is induced at every moment, even against their will. After all, it is not without reason that the foreign HDZ salute to the national anthem was introduced as a binding gesture for every Croatian athlete. So then, according to the script, the actors interviewed the athletes in the middle of the HNK stage. They asked them questions that make the viewer feel ashamed and transfer shame to them, to which they answered as they knew and were able to, and as suggested by the script.
This whole event, of course, had its own political meaning: an hour and a half of publicity for the Government and its many achievements. Foreign agitation before the presidential elections, but, perhaps even more than that, the strategic cover-up of the mafia-ministerial affair with Vili Beroš – Mali, Hrvoje Petra – Tat and Ivan Turudi – Turud kadija, in the main roles. For these purposes, everything was used, from the stellar charisma of Gertrude Muniti, to the great and intelligent actress Helena Buljan (she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by HDZ’s Nina Obuljen Korinek), to the lightly filled auditorium of the Croatian National Theater in where Zagreb’s sports, theater, acting and cultural elite nested. They are all laughing happily, clapping as if at a kindergarten party, chanting bravo-bravo, and readily agreeing to all the consequences of their own engagement. There were few absentees: those who live and work abroad, and the writer Mate Matiši, a prize-winner for the text, who was simply not ready to take responsibility for something like this. Or he just didn’t come.
Is that world for real? doesn’t know what he’s participating in and what he’s doing? Or do they know, but hope that others will not know it? Or they simply live by playing several roles as citizens at once, and in each of them, among other things, they represent different beliefs. While the drunken HRT cameras were scurrying around the audience, recording the appreciative faces of the actors and the drooling faces of the last theater critics among the patriots, I would see a few distraught women or men who I’m pretty sure don’t think what they think. suggests an event in which they actively participate, so for the umpteenth time I would ask myself what is the problem here? In Belgrade, for example, and in Serbia, theater performances after an event such as the recent accident with the collapse of the canopy at the Novi Sad station, in which fifteen human lives were lost, begin with the reading of highly engaged opposition proclamations. Do the Croatian actors, theater directors and other guests at the Croatian National Theater, which is managed by the failed HDZ’s deputy director, who was appointed to the position of intendant because she was also a failed opera singer, think that as a result of the business of Vili Beroš – Malog i of his comrades and comrades, less than fifteen people perished? Or is that not a problem of Croatian theater, Croatian art and literature? What is their problem, really?
That the theater is used to hide the crimes of the government?