Gabriel Formiggini

Joseph Gabriel Anton Formiggini (born November 2, 1879 in Trieste , † autumn 1936 in Berlin ) was a violinist and orchestra leader in Berlin.

Life

There is only incomplete information about Gabriel Formiggini's life. He was a son of the businessman Arnold Formiggini and his wife Clarissa, nee. Dalla-Volta. In 1907 he was active in Poznan , where he played in the Café International with an Italian orchestra. After that he apparently moved to Berlin and played in the café-restaurant Der Reichshof, which opened in the premises of the former Grand Café Braun at Potsdamer Strasse 74.

In spring 1909 he made a guest appearance with an orchestra in the Berlin Opéra-Café. For the year 1912, appearances by a “Formiggini artist band” in the Hamburg town hall café are documented. Formiggini was to be found in Berlin address books from 1913. At first he was only listed as Kapellmeister, but from 1915 job titles such as cafetier, merchant, coffee house owner etc. were added. In 1913 the "Salon-Orchester" Formiggini performed in the Kerkau Palast. From the spring of 1914 Formiggini began to appear in Café ESP, which belonged to Ernst Deutsch . Formiggini was its partner, another partner was Frieda Scharfe, b. Schaaf, who married Formiggini on February 20, 1917. The marriage certificate shows that Formiggini was a Catholic and that his parents were still alive at the time. His wife is listed in the certificate as Margarete Frieda Schaaf; there is nothing to be read in the document about a first marriage to a Mr. Scharfe. Formiggini's wife was born on March 25, 1880 in Dresden .

The ESP establishment was located at Kurfürstendamm 220. As a coffee house owner at Viktoria-Luise-Platz 3, Formiggini kept the address book from 1918; In 1919, the note “Lichtspiele Königshaus, Neue Königsstr. 61-64 ”. According to the yellow pages, from 1922 he was the owner of the café-hall in the “ Scala ” at Lutherstrasse 22-24, which apparently remained in his possession in the following years, but was renamed several times. From 1931 he was run as an innkeeper in Formigginis Restaurant GmbH on Kurfürstendamm 34. The last entry from 1937 was apparently printed before Formiggini's death in autumn 1936 and only contained the names "Jew" and "Kaufmann".

Formiggini not only played with his orchestra in his own establishments. For a long time he performed in the Eldorado , which was located opposite the “Scala” at Lutherstrasse 31 and existed from 1926 to 1932. Numerous recordings of Formigginis with his orchestra date from this period, often with refraing singing by Theo Lucas : Between 1926 and 1928, around 150 Formiggini records were recorded at VOX .

But Formiggini had contact with VOX even before he started working in the Eldorado. It is possible that he and his orchestra were already hiding behind the name “Vox American Jazz Band”, which began recording ragtime- style records at VOX at the end of 1922 . A little later he recorded a number of other titles at VOX. While the band continued to be referred to as the "American Jazz Band" or "Vox American Jazz Band", Formiggini was explicitly named as the leader on these recordings. In December 1924 he recorded three records with "Formiggini's American Jazz Band" on Homocord . In 1925 the ten-person group called itself the “Original Formiggini Jazz Band” and was part of the revue program “Noch und noch” in Berlin's Admiralspalast . A program of this revue contains a photo of Formigginis with his band. Possibly it shows the line-up for some recordings made up of Karl Kidneyz (trumpet), Tony Weinmann or F. Greenbaum (trombone), Sam Dunkel (tenor saxophone and clarinet), Charlie Spiegel (soprano saxophone and vocals), Ray Allen (piano) and Max Rosen ( Tuba).

Formiggini's last recordings for VOX, which went bankrupt in the spring of 1929, took place at the end of 1928. He probably didn't record any more records after that; Remaining stocks of VOX were taken over and sold by the successor company Kristall (Crystalate Company, England), but Formiggini's new recordings for Kristall are not documented.

Corner of Kurfürstendamm / Uhlandstrasse

Formiggini apparently extended his activity as a restaurateur after he had finished his recording activities. For 1930 he is registered as the owner of the restaurant “Venezia”, which was located in the baroque hall of the “Scala”, and from 1931 he was the owner of “Formigginis Restaurant”. His last private residence in Berlin was at Uhlandstrasse 167 not far from this establishment. In September 1935 the marriage with Frieda Scharfe, geb. Schaaf, divorced. Formiggini's death was reported in a November 1936 note in the émigré magazine Pem's Privat Reports .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Gabriel Formiggini Original Jazz Orchestra based on Joseph Gabriel Anton Formiggini ( Memento from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Formiggini . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1937, part 1, p. 627. "Jude Kaufm. Kurfürstendamm 34".

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