Max Maretzek

Maretzek Maximilian ( Maximilian Mareczek, born June 28, 1821 in Brno, † May 14, 1897 in New York City ) was an American opera director, conductor and composer of Czech origin.

Maretzek was then born in Brno in Moravia. He studied at the University of Vienna, where he was a pupil of Ignaz von Seyfried. He began his musical career as a violinist and composer. At the age of eighteen years, he composed his first opera Hamlet. From 1842 he appeared as a conductor in Paris, from 1844 in London. 1848 invited him Edward P. Fry, manager of the Astor Place Opera House Company, to New York.

After a disastrous season game for Fry resigned this, and Maretzek was manager of the Astor Place Opera. He led the House to new success and traveled with his ensemble in the USA. In 1850 he also took over the management of an opera troupe from Havana.

Later he headed next to the Astor Place Opera, as the Grand Opera and since 1854 the Academy of Music. His marked by violent ups and downs career was always the center of attention of the New York press that it was " indefatigable the Max" and "the Napoleon of Opera " dubbed. Competing companies like the impresario Max Strakosch in the 1850s ( "the war of the Maxes " ) and music stars who arrived with their own companies such as Jenny Lind, Henriette Sontag and Marietta Alboni brought him repeatedly in distress.

1875 Maretzek withdrew from the opera business. He worked as a singing teacher and began to compose again. It was his second opera Sleepy Hollow, which was premiered in 1879. 1889 its fiftieth anniversary was celebrated as an opera conductor with a concert at the Metropolitan Opera, which involved conductors such as Theodore Thomas, Anton Seidl, Frank van der Stucken, Adolf New Dorff and Walter Damrosch.

In 1855, he published his memoirs as an opera director Crotches and Quavers, which he continued in 1890 with the band Shaps and Flats.