Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Hammerstein II ( born July 12, 1895 in New York City; † August 23, 1960 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania) was an American musical producer, librettist and lyricist.

Life and work

His grandfather, Oscar Hammerstein I, was an opera impresario, his uncle, a successful Broadway producer. As a teenager, he wrote several shows in which he also appeared. His first musical, Always You, for which he wrote book and lyrics, was founded in 1921 on Broadway. He was lyricist for the popular Rudolf Friml operetta Rose - Marie ( 1924) and then began a successful collaboration with composer Jerome Kern. Her biggest success was the 1927 musical Show Boat, which is considered one of the masterpieces of the American musical theater. For the musical they wrote the Evergreen Ol ' Man River. Show Boat in 1929, 1936 and 1951 filmed. Hammerstein worked in the years to, among other things further with core and the operetta composer Sigmund Romberg; important works were going Sweet Adeline, Music in the Air and Very Warm for May, which was a failure, but a standard that has become Song of core and Hammerstein includes:. " All the Things You Are" with Romberg he wrote the hits "Lover, Come Back to Me "and" Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise. "

Hammerstein began his most successful and longest-lasting cooperation in 1943, when he met the musical composer Richard Rodgers, whose previous lyricist Lorenz Hart was not interested in a fabric that described the historical problems between cowboys and farmers and the establishment of the State of Oklahoma on unusually serious nature. The result was Oklahoma!, A show that revolutionized the American musical by renounced music and dance numbers that were not connected with the plot.

Hammerstein prompted Rodgers, from then on jazz elements in his music to do without. The "serious" musical genre that resulted from called Musical Play, in contrast to the more oriented to the musical comedy revue. It was followed by the successful works Carousel (1945, with the song You'll Never Walk Alone ), South Pacific (1949 ), The King and I (1951) and The Sound of Music (1959 ) and the musical film State Fair ( State Fair ) and the TV musical Cinderella. Hammerstein also wrote book and lyrics for Carmen Jones, an adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen with an all-black cast.

Shortly after the premiere of The Sound of Music on Broadway died Hammerstein.

Others

After Oscar Hammerstein, a submarine volcano in the Pacific plate at the position 32 ° 29.70 'N, 165 ° 46.20 ' W is named.