He ends up back at the inn, an old soldier at a table, having just explained how he personally took Napoleon apart, and the room lets him have it. Back up to the start, though. The thing opens with a sneeze — the whole orchestra, together, one great ah-choo before a note of the story. Hungarian custom says if somebody sneezes while you're talking, what you said is true. So that's the gag of the evening, right there in bar one: everything that follows has been certified.
And down in the pit, the cimbalom, hammers on strings, a sound no violin section can fake. Kodály wanted the village in the opera house and he just brought it in through the stage door. Budapest, 1926, the Royal Hungarian Opera House, Paulini and Harsányi on the words, out of an old comic poem of Garay's about a man who liked a drink and a story. Listen for the cimbalom in the Intermezzo — it's doing the talking.
Garay's poem is Az obsitos — the discharged soldier — from 1843, an old veteran at the inn telling it bigger each round. Kodály kept the shape of a man talking and let the orchestra be the listeners who half believe him.
Otis, the Singspiel part is why casting it is odd work: more talking than singing, so a house needs a Háry who can hold a room with plain speech, and a bit of comic timing on top of the voice. Some productions bring in an actor for the spoken scenes and let the orchestra carry the rest.