In the Sunday, September 13, 1936 issue of the Pesti Napló (Pest Journal), Rózsi Walter was asked about her roles at the Opera House. She mentioned in this brief interview that her new house had just been built and that recently she had been occupied with the furnishing of this home. “At the moment, I have no idea what the first news will be of what role I will be playing at the Opera House,” she began the interview. “I spent the summer in Austria, and I returned from there not long ago. At home, I have been busy with furnishing my house that was just built, and I have not yet even had time to look at the program for this year’s season. The one thing I do know and am happy to talk about is that I will appear on the Opera House stage as an operetta prima donna around December.” (Walter Rózsi Sybill szerepében lép fel az Operaházban [Rózsi Walter Will Appear in the Role of Sybill at the Opera House]. Pesti Napló, 13 September 1936, 23.)
The major professional press, in other words the leading architectural journal Tér és Forma (Space and Form), did not publish a story on the villa until January of 1937. However, from the few lines above, it is clear that the villa on Bajza Street was ready by September of 1936, and Rózsi Walter had already furnished it by the end of the summer or the beginning of September. It is possible to get an idea of the interior of the villa from archival photographs made by Zoltán Seidner that are preserved in the HMA MPDC Monument Protection Documentation Center Photographic Archives. By looking at the images made of the salon, the breakfast nook and the bedroom, the villa was furnished with Neo-Baroque furniture in accordance with the contemporary popular tastes, which stood in contrast with the clean, modern design of the villa. This was not at all uncommon in the period, and one finds this combination in many archival photographs.
József Fischer also recalled that he first talked about the commission with Rózsi Walter and her husband “in their home furnished with Rococo furniture.” There, they indicated to him that as he could see they had “an established taste and this furniture does not fit in well with a modern house.” Despite this, Fischer designed a modern villa for them, and this did not disappoint them to his recollection. As he wrote, “One morning, I went into the nearly completed building. As I stepped into the hall, the singer ran to me, hugged me, kissed me, and said that when she arrived last night [presumably from her vacation], she wanted to see the house right away and she burst into tears of joy at the sight of it from the yard.”
(Source: Fischer József emlékezései 1972–74-ből [Memoirs of József Fischer from 1972–1974]. In: Lapis Angularis I. Források a Magyar Építészeti Múzeum gyűjteményéből – Hauszmann Alajos, Maróti Géza, Kozma Lajos, Kotsis Iván, Borbíró Virgil, Fischer József, Gádoros Lajos, ed. Hajdú Virág – Prakfalvi Endre. Budapest: OMvH Magyar Építészeti Múzeum, 1995, 319.)
Ágnes Anna Sebestyén
The salon on the first floor of the villa
© HMA MPDC Monument Protection Documentation Center, Photographic Archives, photograph: Zoltán Seidner
The breakfast nook on the second floor of the villa
© HMA MPDC Monument Protection Documentation Center, Photographic Archives, photograph: Zoltán Seidner
Rózsi Walter’s bedroom on the second floor of the villa
© HMA MPDC Monument Protection Documentation Center, Photographic Archives, photograph: Zoltán Seidner