Honthy Hanna

Honthy Hanna (1893 to 1978) was the reigning diva of Hungarian operetta for more than half a century. György Rauscher painted her in 1927, and the portrait is recorded as catalogue no. 55 of the 1935 estate exhibition (/bibliography#szamado-2019).

Who she was

Honthy was the defining primadonna of the Budapest operetta stage, above all at the Fővárosi Operettszínház, where her name became synonymous with the genre. Her career stretched across the interwar decades and on into the post-war era, and roles such as Cecília in Mária főhadnagy and her place in the Kálmán operetta repertoire made her a household name in Hungary.

The Rauscher portrait

Rauscher portrayed Honthy in 1927, in the years when he was building his Budapest reputation as a portraitist of the stage and the literary world. The portrait is listed as catalogue no. 55 of the 1935 Nemzeti Szalon estate exhibition and was recorded as still extant in Számadó’s survey. The work record is at /works/honthy-hanna-1927.