Ralph Benatzky
Ralph Benatzky ( born June 5, 1884 in Moravian Budwitz, Old Austria; † 16 Oktober1957 in Zurich; actually Rudolph Josef Frantisek Benatzky ) was an Austrian composer.
Life
1899 Rudolph Josef Frantisek Benatzky entered the imperial Cadet school in Vienna. As a midshipman, he was decommissioned in 1904 a lieutenant in an infantry regiment and was stationed in Prague and Kolomea in Galicia until 1907 he became illness leave and in 1909 retired. He studied in Prague and Vienna, German literature, philosophy and music, and was awarded his doctorate with a thesis on Goethe and the folk song in Vienna as a doctor of philosophy in 1910. In the Viennese cabaret " Hell" 1908/ 09 his first songs were sung, he called himself now Ralph Benatzky. His first successes he achieved in 1912 as Artistic Director of the cabaret " candy dish " in Munich and in 1914 as co-director of "colorful stage Rideamus " in Vienna. The pupil of Antonín Dvořák in Prague and Felix Mottl began in Munich, cheeky and frivolous to write songs for the cabaret, with the lyrics by himself came.
On October 4, 1909 Benatzky married the singer and actress Fedi FERARD (actually Eugenie Ninon Decloux ), about 1914, the couple divorced again.
In 1914 he learned the Diseuse Josma Selim know, the main composer and accompanist he was and whom he married on 15 November 1914. With your own Chanson program Joyous muse, he joined with her in several European capitals. In 1910 he wrote his first operetta, the others followed. In the same year he became musical director at the Munich cabaret " candy dish ", 1914/15 Co - director and senior director in the Bunte stage " Rideamus " in Vienna. With the operetta Love the snow he could in 1916 to celebrate his first major success in the operetta Ronacher Theater in Vienna.
With the Revue at all in the Grosses Schauspielhaus began in 1924 his collaboration with director Erik Charell in Berlin, where he in 1927 because of better earning potential settled with his wife. After a series of pure revues that created Benatzky with Charell in Berlin and together with Karl Farkas and Fritz Grünbaum in Vienna, he composed for the Grosses Schauspielhaus in 1928, the trilogy of so-called "historical revue operetta " on which Benatzky world fame is based (each with Charell as a producer and director): Casanova ( 1928), The Three Musketeers (1929 ) and as the climax of The white Horse Inn ( 1930). The pieces are characterized by the fact that they combine in a clever way old, already well-known music with new jazz sounds of the 1920s; Benatzky himself said in the case of the Musketeers of a music " from yesterday and today ." Especially in Rößl joined Benatzky typical (pseudo - ) Folklore ways with today, syncopated dance rhythms and thus achieved worldwide success - there were significant productions in London and Vienna (1931 ), Paris ( 1932) and New York ( 1936). However Benatzky has long been dissatisfied with his most famous of work from an artistic point of view, because although he was responsible for the overall musical design (and the royalties received ), but on request Charell could not compose all the music itself and at the last minute writing the lyrics had to give to Robert Gilbert, despite otherwise, prior contractual arrangements with Charell.
Nevertheless Benatzky enabled the financial success of the White Horse Inn buying a villa in Thun. As early as 1932 Benatzky left Berlin and moved with his third wife (∞ April 17, 1930 ), the dancer Melanie " Mela " Hoffmann, Switzerland. It frightened the political situation; he had already in 1924 the " hakenkreuzlerische life " in his diary says: ". , Teutons ' with potbelly and neck bacon, shaved with backward and cockscomb -like top winning by a crown hairstyle skull, [ ... ] Aryan- arrogant, parochial cackling "
In addition to the great revues and operettas Revue is dedicated Benatzky from the end of the 1920s, the increasingly smaller-sized form of " musical comedies ", for which he was responsible as a librettist. This Charming Miss (1933 ) and The small café emerged successful works such as Adieu Mimi (1926 ), My Sister and I (1930 ), ( 1934).
Zarah Leander he gave to the Hollywood parody operetta Axel at heaven's door at the Theater an der Wien (1936, lyrics by Hans Weigel ) the first national success that made them known outside of their Scandinavian homeland. When the Ufa hired her, she insisted on Benatzky as a composer for her first music film for New Shores (1937 ). He wrote it for them the evergreens Yes, sir! and I stand in the rain.
In June 1938 he left Switzerland and went to Hollywood, where he had previously signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer, which he then had but re-dissolve because of the frustrating working conditions. After he was denied the Swiss citizenship, in 1940 he emigrated permanently to the United States and conducted there every day for half an hour his chapel in the radio station Whom. He translated American texts such as Porgy and Bess, but also William Somerset Maugham's memoirs look back on my life (The Summing Up, 1948) and took part in occasional concert appearances and tours. In Benatzky translation Porgy and Bess experienced after the end of World War II and his German -language premiere.
1948 could be Benatzky settled in Zurich. In 1953 his autobiographical novel in major and minor. He was buried at his own request in St. Wolfgang, the venue of his most famous operetta The White Horse Inn.
His estate is now preserved by the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin and managed. In 1962 ( 22nd District ) was named after him in the Benatzkygasse Vienna Danube city.