You may only have heard of King Stephen (born 970, king 1001-1038) via Beethoven's König Stephan Overture (Op. 117):

King Stephen is credited as Hungary's first Christian king. The king who saved his people from disappearing into the annals of history - like all preceding nomads did who came from the Eastern steppes to Europe - by integrating them into the Western Christian world. Doing so by establishing a (then) modern state, establishing a strong rule of law, and adopting Christianity.

The Christian king: Saint Stephen's statue at Heroes' Square in Budapest. from Budapest Photo Gallery.

Upon a more critical look, Stephen was also an usurper, an enslaver, and a bloodthirsty tyrant standing out even among his numerous contemporaries.

A hundred years earlier, the Magyars, an alliance of 7+1 nomadic tribes, invaded the Carpathian basin, and the tribes settled it in a mosaic pattern. The leader of the strongest tribe (the Megyers, whose main body settled in the Northwest) also functioned as the leader of the whole alliance. However, his powers didn't amount to much more than leading the regular raids into Western Europe.

By the time of Stephen's father Géza (died 997), the raids were over: the German knights learnt to not fall for the Hungarian battle tactic (fake withdrawal followed by arrow rain), and it was time for politics and cultural/economic exchange. Tribal leaders let themselves be converted by Byzantine or German or Papal missionaries, meaning appropiate political allegiances and military help - and began to wrestle for power among themselves.

So, first of all, the project started by Géza was one to subjugate autonomous tribes and clans under one central power.

What's more, Stephen could finish his father's project (much like Alexander finished Philip II's) only as usurper: the tribal rule of succession was oldest man alive in the Megyer tribe leaders' line, so Stephen first had to fight and execute the rightful heirs.

In fighting domestic opponents, Stephen (and Géza) relied heavily on German knights, primarily those in his Bavarian wife's entourage. Still, the young king's father (or advisors) had an idea how to avoid too much foreign dependency: it wasn't the Byzantine Emperor, nor the Holy Roman [German] Emperor whom they asked for a Christian crown, but the Pope.

With the Papal crown came Christianization.

As implied before, Christian missionaries arrived well before Stephen: the real change the crowned Stephen brought was to end religious freedom. Every village was ordered to build churches, everyone except the youngest and oldest were ordered to visit mass every Sunday, and failure to do so was penalized with heavy fines to death. Naturally, pagans revolted, and killed foreign bishops, who in turn were sainted, while the failed revolts were followed by bloody retributions. King Stephen himself was sainted 'thanks' to miralces connected to his relic (his mummified right hand).

Photo from the Portal of Kengyel Community.

Meanwhile, a feudal state was in emergence. As yet most lands were in royal control, with local power exerted via tax-collecting and law-giving bureaucrats and soldiers stationed in newly constructed castles. What was that power about? Let's call a spade a spade: for the majority of the population, King Stephen's reform was to turn them from free men into serfs.

The rock opera "Stephen the King"

Levente Szörényi and János Bródy were the Lennon-McCartney of Hungary's equivalent of the Beatles, Illés.

Cover of a 1972 Illés album. Szörényi is top left, Bródy below him with the outstretched hand. From OstRock-Lexikon.

Beyond the musical talent, they were also the most politicised. Before 1989, that meant getting messages out between the lines, and maintaining relations with dissidents - Szörényi more with the "folk writers' group", Bródy more with the liberal dissidents. After 1989, it meant going opposed directions. Szörényi drifted off to the occult far-right (at one occasion protesting the filming location of the film adaptation of a Nobel-winning Hungarian Holocaust survivor's book, saying it's "Hungary's heart-chakra"), while the Jewish-Hungarian Bródy supported the liberal party. (Despite this total opposition, they managed to play and write music together again.)

It was this duo who dreamt up and composed a massive rock opera about Stephen's initial rise to power and defeat of his uncle Koppány.

At this time, the regime had a three-tiered cultural policy: artists and their products were either forbidden, tolerated or supported (called the "policy of three Ts" after the initials in Hungarian). To get something this massive performed, it had to get into the last bin, and for that, the message had to be hidden in a really special way.

After long years of struggle, they succeeded. The premiere was on 20 August 1983.

The event was massive in itself: in a park in Budapest, staged by one of the film directors in the "supported" bin (a scam artist excelling in nationalist kitch, post-1989 over-compensating his inglorious past with even cruder nationalist kitch), pirotechnics, horses, thousands of dancing extras and pretty much the entire second line of Hungarian rock performed (many making their name with their Stephen the King role).

Photo from Zikkurat.

The premiere was also televised.

To get the right picture of what that means, note that there was only public television at the time, meaning 100% viewership share, and pretty much everyone in the country was talking about whatever live event was on telly the day before.

On the suface, the conflicts driving the story (and the music): paganism vs. Christianity, relative vs. relative, Stephen's struggle with his destiny as his mother and advisors push him on, and Stephen vs. his uncle Koppány.

Photo from Zikkurat.

However, there was the double twist: while Stephen was a pious 'good guy' and he won, he did so advised by less than symphatetic advisers, and the defeated and quartered Koppány was styled as a fredom fighter.

The avid listener could substitute Christianity for communism, Stephen's duty of Western integration(!) for the then regime's maintenance of the Eastern Bloc, Stephen's German soldiers for the Red Army stationed in Hungary. So even at this deeper level of meaning, superficially, supporters of the Kádár regime could identify with Stephen, but for those who had ears, some lyrics got a very modern, and rebellious, meaning.

In effect, and clearly when performed, the real hero is Koppány, not the title role. (Twist of fate: it was recently revealed that the singer who became one with that role was an informant: he spied on his bandmates in his own band.)

Gyula Vikidál, then member of hard rock band Dinamit, as Koppány in 'pagan' dress at the 1983 premiere. Photo from gallery at A Társulat.

The rock opera is considered a turning point by many, for many different reasons:

• some saw it as a first big open call for freedom,
  
• some as the liberation of national feeling,
  
• some (who had more ears to Stephen's role) as the re-emergence of religious thought in public life (later on another step for the clergy was the re-start of the 20 August processions carrying Stephen's 'Saint Right Hand' around Budapest),
  
• some (again with more ears for Stephen's role) saw it as a first loud call for Western integration (from Warshaw Pact to NATO, from Comecon to EU).

Now, for the 25th anniversary, the public TV had the idea to stage a talent show seeking to fill the roles for a jubilee performance of Stephen the King.