Frederick Loewe was born in Vienna, Austria, on June 10, 1904. A musical prodigy, he began to study the piano when he was five; started composition at seven; at thirteen made a successful appearance as pianist with the Berlin Symphony; and at fifteen was the composer of a hit song, “Katrina,” that sold over a million copies of sheet music in Europe. He received a thorough musical training from Busoni, Eugène d’Albert, and Emil Nikolaus Rezniček, winning the Hollander Medal for piano playing in 1923. One year after that he came to the United States. Unable to make any progress in his musical career, he spent the next decade traveling around the country and filling all sorts of odd jobs. He punched cattle, mined gold, served as a riding instructor, and even boxed professionally. Eventually he came back to New York where he found a job in a Greenwich Village café playing the piano. In 1938 four of his songs were heard in a Broadway musical, Great Lady, a failure. A meeting with Alan Jay Lerner, a young lyricist and librettist, brought him a gifted collaborator. They wrote a musical comedy that was produced by a stock company in Detroit, and another called What’s Up that was seen on Broadway. Their first major success came with the Broadway musical, Brigadoon, in 1947. My Fair Lady, in 1956, was one of the greatest successes of the Broadway theater. They also helped make entertainment history further by writing songs for the motion picture musical, Gigi, the first to win nine Academy Awards, including one for Lerner and Loewe for the title song. In 1960, Lerner and Loewe wrote the Broadway musical Camelot based on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Brigadoon was a whimsical Scottish fantasy which came to Broadway on March 13, 1947, book and lyrics by Lerner. Brigadoon is a mythical town in Scotland which comes to life for a single day once every hundred years. Two American tourists happen to come to Brigadoon during its one day of existence. They become a part of its quaint life, and one of them falls in love with a Scottish lass. The musical highlights include a song that became a hit in 1947, “Almost Like Being In Love,” and several that have a charming Scottish flavor, including “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” “The Heather on the Hill,” and “I’ll Come Home With Bonnie Jean.”
My Fair Lady, produced on March 15, 1956, was Lerner’s adaptation for the popular musical theater of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Eliza Doolittle, an ignorant flower girl and daughter of a cockney, is transformed by the phonetician, Professor Henry Higgins, into a cultivated lady who is successfully palmed off upon high English society as a duchess. Higgins falls in love with her and, though a long confirmed bachelor, finds he can no longer live without her. My Fair Lady became one of the most highly acclaimed musical productions of recent memory; Brooks Atkinson called it “one of the best musicals of the century.” It achieved a fabulous Broadway run and was brought by many touring countries to all parts of the civilized world, including the Soviet Union. It captured one third of the honors annually conferred on the theater by the Antoinette Perry Awards. The original-cast recording sold over three million discs. The principal numbers from Loewe’s captivating score include three romantic songs, two of the Hit Parade variety (“I Could Have Danced All Night” and “On the Street Where You Live”) and the third, “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”; two atmospheric numbers that evoke musically the place and setting of the play, “The Ascot Gavotte” and “The Embassy Waltz”; and the two cockney ditties of Eliza’s father, “Get Me to the Church On Time” and “With a Little Bit of Luck.”
Albert Lortzing
Gustav Albert Lortzing was born in Berlin on October 23, 1801. His parents were actors compelled to lead an itinerant life which made it impossible for Albert to obtain any systematic education. His mother taught him music, the study of which he later continued briefly in Berlin with Rungenhagen. His first effort at composition consisted of some songs, but in 1824 he completed his first opera, Ali Pascha von Janina. From 1833 to 1844 he was employed as a tenor at the Municipal Theater in Leipzig, for which he wrote the comic opera Die beiden Schuetzen, successfully produced in 1837. He achieved his greatest success the same year with the comic opera, Zar und Zimmermann, which within a few years’ time became a favorite among theater audiences throughout Europe. His later operettas included Der Wildschuetz (The Poacher) in 1842 and Der Waffenschmied (The Armourer) in 1846, while one of his finest romantic operas was Undine in 1845. Lortzing also filled several engagements as conductor of operas and operettas in Leipzig, Vienna and Berlin, and as an opera impresario. He died in Berlin on January 21, 1851, one day after his last opera, Die Opernprobe (The Opera Rehearsal) was introduced in Frankfort.
Lortzing was one of the earliest and most successful exponents of German national comic opera; and Czar and the Carpenter (Zar und Zimmermann) was his masterwork. It was first produced in Leipzig on December 22, 1837. The music is consistently light and tuneful, frequently in the style of German folk songs. The libretto, by the composer, is a delightful comedy based on an actual historic episode: the escapade of Peter the Great of Russia in Holland where he worked as a carpenter. In the Lortzing comic opera, Peter the Great is a carpenter on a ship at Saardam where he meets a compatriot, also named Peter, who is a deserter. Temporarily they become rivals for the affection of Mary. After the arrival of the Ambassadors from France and England to seek out the Emperor, the latter quietly departs for his homeland, leaving behind him both money and an official pardon for the other Peter. The gay spirit of the comic opera as a whole is magically caught not only in its vivacious overture, but in several familiar excerpts. The most notable are: the Burgomaster’s comic entrance song, “O sancta justa”; in the second act, the Wedding Chorus, and the French Ambassador’s beautiful air, “Lebe wohl, mein flandrisch’ Maedchen”; in the third act the vigorous Clog Dance (Holzschutanz), and the very famous air of Czar Peter, “Sonst spielt’ ich mit Zepter.”
Alexandre Luigini
Alexandre Luigini was born in Lyons, France, on March 9, 1850. He was the son of the distinguished conductor of the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. After attending the Paris Conservatory—where he was a pupil of Massenet and Massart among others—the younger Luigini played the violin in his father’s orchestra. In 1870 he began a successful career as ballet composer with Le Rêve de Nicette, given in Lyons. His greatest success came with the Ballet Égyptien, first seen in Lyons in 1875. For twenty years Luigini was the conductor of the Grand Theater in Lyons and professor of harmony at the Lyons Conservatory. Until the end of his life he was the conductor of the Opéra-Comique in Paris. He died in Paris on July 29, 1906.
An orchestral suite derived from some of the most attractive pages of the Ballet Égyptien score is a favorite of bands and salon orchestras everywhere. This is music striking for its Oriental-type melodies and harmonies, and for its colorful orchestral hues. The first two movements are particularly popular. The first begins with a strong and stately theme, but midway comes a gayer section in an exotic Oriental style. The second movement highlights a capricious subject for the woodwind, once again in a recognizable Oriental style.