Nicolae Bretan

Nicolae Bretan ( born March 25, 1887 in Naszód (Hungary, today Romania); † December 1, 1968 in Cluj) was a Romanian composer.

Life

Nicolae Bretan was born the son of a Romanian hotel manager in the then Hungarian Năsăud, grew up as the Romanians in Austria -Hungary and learned in Transylvania, the Romanian, Hungarian and German language. In this at least trilingual region also changed the name with which he signed, from Nicolae to Miklós or to Nicholas. Bretan studied at the Academies of Music in Vienna and Budapest. The singing career as a baritone, he began 1913 in Pozsony. He had engagements in Munich, Berlin and in Oradea and sang the Barbiere by Rossini.

He was the creator of over two hundred songs. The scoring was based on the language in which the poet had written the poem. His favorite German poet Nikolaus Lenau and were Heinrich Heine, mainly Mihai Eminescu was the poet of his Romanian songs. The collection my songs - country contains 90 Romanian, 70 Hungarian and 50 German songs, his religious songs have some of Latin texts.

His first opera, " Luceafarul " was first performed in 1921 in Cluj, the drama Golem ember akar lenni (1922 ), a play on the theme of Golem Illés Kaczér from 1922, he wrote in 1924 and even the Romanian libretto. From " Horia ", 1935 also premiered in Cluj, would something like a Romanian National Opera may be, they still are of the Horea revolt in Transylvania against the Hungarian landowners in 1784, but even the Communists ignored later the opera.

From the Hungarian Transylvania again since 1940 the entire Jewish kinship of his Hungarian wife Nora Osvát was deported in 1944 by the German Eichmann command and his Hungarian helpers and came in a concentration camp killed. After the Second World War Bretan was opera director, but as he did not want to join the communist party-state, he was dismissed in 1948, excluded from the Composers' Union and had thus in Romania largely a performance ban. Most recently, he wrote in 1955 a Requiem, in which he himself took over the baritone part in the first performance, after which he was able to publish anything.

The set up on the initiative of his daughter Judit Nicolae Bretan Music Foundation manages his estate. The operas and songs are, inter alia, published by Nimbus Records.

Compositions (selection )

• Luceafarul, opera in one act after the poem by Mihai Eminescu, UA. Cluj 1921 ( " The Evening Star ").
• Golem Lásadása, opera in 1924, libretto and music by Bretan after the drama of Golem Illés Kaczér
• Eroli di la Rovine, opera 1935
• Horia, opera 1937, after Ghiţă Popp
• Arald, Opera 1939, after Mihael Eminescu " The Ghost ". UA: 1982 in Iaşi
• A Különös Szeder - est, opera in Hungarian in 1945, UA 1974. Handles the Holocaust.
• Requiem, Mass in 1955
• Songs to poems by Heinrich Heine, Nikolaus Lenau, Rainer Maria Rilke, Budapest: Editio Musica, 1990 score

Media (selection)

• Nicolae Bretan sampler, operas, requiem & songs Nimbus Records 1998
• My songs country: The songs of Nicolae Bretan, Nimbus Records 2000 ( recordings from 1973-1976 )