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Polish Tango 1930: Zofia Terné - To pewno miłość (It Looks Like Love)

1,951 views · Published 10 June 2016 · 3:17 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: 240252 · 2016 · Music

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Zofia Terné z Orkiestrą - To pewno miłość [It Looks Like Love] Tango z rewii „Dookoła Bartel” teatru Qui pro Quo (muz. Krupiński – sł. Oldlen [Julian Tuwim]) Syrena-Electro 1930 (Polish)

NOTE: Zofia Terné  (née Wiera Chajter) - popular Polish singer and cabaret performer. Born in 1909 to a family of  Jewish merchant in the town of Równe  (the Wolhynia region in prewar Poland, now part of Belarus) she completed the renowned Conservatory of Lwów, in class of piano and singing. She always dreamt of the operatic career, yet her minute posture made it difficult. In 1926, having met in Lwów the poet Marian Hemar - who was already a recognized  author in Polish literary scene and wrote also for the Warsaw cabarets - she  received from him beautiful, poetical lyrics of her first great hit: “Tyle jest miast…” (There are so many cities…). The song, based on Nacio Herb Brown’s English waltz “A Bunch of The Old Love Letters”, is a lyrical prayer to the beauty and charm of the city of Lwów. (In the Polish history, Lwów has been one of the major Polish cities, full of the most precious Polish historical heritage, which in spite of that, or perhaps because of, in 1945 in Yalta had been assigned by the Western Allies to the bunch of Stalin’s post war territorial trophies, and is now part of the Western Ukraine). The song “Tyle jest miast…” became ever since Zofia Terné’s signature hit and is still often sung and recorded by today’s performers, so in Poland as in  Ukraine. 


       In 1927, Zofia Terné traveled to Warsaw, where she was immediately admitted to the crew of a prestigious literary and political cabaret Qui pro Quo, where she stayed until its disbandment in 1932. In September 1939, after having been arrested by the Germans and then released with order to travel to the Soviet occupational zone, she returned to her birthplace in Równe and was then arrested by the Soviets. Finally, in the Polish émigré army in the exile, which was organized in 1942 by Polish General Anders, Zofia Terné joined the army theatre, consisting of many Polish artists, who after invasion on Poland in 1939, escaped from Warsaw or were deported into the Soviet Union (Henryk Wars, Jerzy Petersburski, Albert Harris, Adam Aston, Eugeniusz Bodo – who was later murderd by the Soviets in the Gulag camp, in Kotlas, to name only a few). After the war, she decided to stay abroad and she continued successful performances for the Polish émigré circles in United Kingdom and throughout Western Europe, until her death in 1987 in London.  


      This nice lyrical tango was performed by Zofia Terné in theatre Qui pro Quo, in the political revue “Dookoła Bartel” staged in Warsaw in January 1930. The title of the show reflects the kind of a high refined humor, which was obligatory among Qui pro Quo authors. In Polish, there is an idiom “dookoła Wojtek” [= around Wojtek] meaning “stubbornly doing something round and round, but in vain” (Wojtek is a popular diminutive of Polish first name Wojciech). In that context, the revue’s title “Dookoła Bartel” becomes a derisive play of words commenting the prolonged political blind man’s buff in Poland, when Prime Minister Kazimierz Bartel, who between 1926-29 had been 4 times elected the leader of the government office, in Dec. 1929 was chosen again for the 5th time!


    Theatre Qui pro Quo was active in Warsaw between 1924 – 1932 - was a hotbed for many significant artists in the history of Polish pop culture. The theatre’s  writers (Julian Tuwim, Marian Hemar, Jerzy Jurandot, Konrad Tom) wrote texts of innumerable Polish hits, sketches or literary miniatures, many of which are still performed in Poland and  are considered as the Polish little stage classics. During several years of its existence in the basement  of the Luxenburg Gallery in Senatorska Street in Warsaw, the cream of Polish performers defiled trough its stage: Hanka Ordonówna, Eugeniusz Bodo, Mira Ziminska, Adolf Dymsza, Konrad Tom, Zula Pogorzelska, Chór Dana, or Lopek Krukowski. Director Jerzy Boczkowski was himself a composer and man of the high demands (several of his compositions are the evergreens in history of the Polish song), however the time of the Great Depression as well as rising demands of his artists (in sense of lavish lifestyles of many of the newborn stars) caused the increasing debt in theatre’s finances, until its collapse in 1932.

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