Ralph Benatzky

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ralph Benatzky on the Austrian postage stamp

Ralph Benatzky (born June 5, 1884 in Mährisch Budwitz , Moravia ; † October 16, 1957 in Zurich ; actually Rudolph Josef František Benatzky ) was an Austrian composer .

Life

In 1899 Rudolph Josef František Benatzky entered the kuk Kadettenanstalt in Vienna . As a retired ensign , he became a lieutenant in an infantry regiment in 1904 and was stationed in Prague and Kolomea in Galicia until he was given leave of absence due to illness in 1907 and retired in 1909. He studied German literature , philosophy and music in Prague and Vienna and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1910 with a thesis on Goethe and the folk song in Vienna . In the Viennese "Cabaret Hell ”, his first chansons were sung in 1908/09 , and he was now called Ralph Benatzky. He achieved his first successes in 1912 as artistic director of the cabaret “Bonbonniere” in Munich and in 1914 as co-director of the “Bunten Bühne Rideamus” in Vienna. The pupil of Antonín Dvořák in Prague and Felix Mottl in Munich began to write cheeky and frivolous songs for cabaret, with the lyrics also coming from himself.

On October 4, 1909, Benatzky married the singer and actress Fédi Férard (actually Eugenie Ninon Decloux), and around 1914 the marriage was divorced again.

In 1914 he met the Diseuse Josma Selim , whose main composer and piano accompanist he became and whom he married on November 15, 1914. He performed with her in several European capitals with her own chanson program, Hehre Muse . In 1910 he wrote his first operetta , which was followed by more. In the same year he became musical director of the Munich cabaret “Bonbonniere”, and in 1914/15 he was co-director and senior director of the “Rideamus” colorful stage in Vienna. With the operetta Love in the Snow he was able to celebrate his first major operetta success at the Ronacher Theater in Vienna in 1916 .

His collaboration with director Erik Charell in Berlin began in 1924 with the revue An alle in the Großes Schauspielhaus , where he settled down with his wife in 1927 because of the better earning potential. After a series of pure revues that Benatzky created with Charell in Berlin and together with Karl Farkas and Fritz Grünbaum in Vienna, from 1928 he composed the trilogy of the so-called “historical revue operettas” for the Große Schauspielhaus, on which Benatzky's world fame is based (each with Charell as producer and director): Casanova (1928), The Three Musketeers (1929) and, as the crowning highlight, Im Weißen Rößl (1930). The pieces are characterized by the fact that they cleverly combine old, well-known music with new jazz sounds from the 1920s; In the case of the Musketeers, Benatzky himself spoke of music "from yesterday and today". In the Rößl in particular , Benatzky combined typical (pseudo) folklore tunes with syncopated dance rhythms up-to-date and achieved worldwide success - there were important productions in London and Vienna (1931), Paris (1932) and New York (1936). However, Benatzky was dissatisfied with his most famous work from an artistic point of view for a long time, because although he was responsible for the overall musical design (and received the corresponding royalties ), at Charell's request he was not allowed to compose all the music himself and at the last second he was allowed to write the lyrics had to hand over to Robert Gilbert , despite previous contractual agreements with Charell.

Memorial plaque at the Hotel Zum Weißen Rössl in St. Wolfgang

Nevertheless, the financial success of the Rößl made it possible for Benatzky to buy a villa in Thun . Benatzky left Berlin in 1932 and moved to Switzerland with his third wife (⚭ April 17, 1930), the dancer Melanie "Mela" Hoffmann. The political situation worried him; He had already commented on the "swastika-like life" in his diary in 1924: "'Urgermanen' with a waist and neck fat, with a backward-shaved skull topped like a cock's comb with a parting hairstyle, [...] Aryan-arrogant, cackling provincial."

In addition to the major revues and revue operettas, from the late 1920s onwards, Benatzky increasingly devoted himself to the smaller-sized form of “musical comedies”, for which he was also responsible as a lyricist. Successful works such as Adieu Mimi (1926), Meine Sister und Ich (1930), Beauberdes Fräulein (1933) and Das kleine Café (1934) were created.

He brought Zarah Leander the first national success with the Hollywood parody operetta Axel an der Himmelstür in Theater an der Wien (1936; lyrics by Hans Weigel ), which made her famous outside her Scandinavian homeland. When Ufa hired her, she insisted on Benatzky as the composer for her first music film Zu neue Ufern (1937). In it he wrote the evergreens for her Yes, sir! and I stand in the rain .

Ralph Benatzky's grave in St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut

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 to terminate because of the frustrating working conditions. After he was refused Swiss citizenship, he finally emigrated to the USA in 1940, where he conducted his band on the Whom radio station for half an hour a day . He translated American texts like Porgy and Bess , but also William Somerset Maugham's memoir looking back on my life ( The Summing Up , 1948) and took part in occasional concert appearances and tours. In Benatzky's translation, Porgy and Bess also had its German-language premiere after the end of World War II .

In 1948 Benatzky settled in Zurich. In 1953 he wrote his autobiographical novel In major and minor . He was buried at his own request in St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut , the venue for his most famous operetta, Im Weißen Rößl .

His estate is now kept and administered by the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. In 1962, the Benatzkygasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after him.

Awards

Works (selection)

See also

literature

  • Barbara Boisits: Benatzky, Ralph. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 1, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-7001-3043-0 .
  • Volker Klotz : "Post-Kakan operettas around '33 and '38 using the example of Emmerich Kálmán and Ralf [sic] Benatzky". In: Austrian musicians in exile . Vienna 1988, pp. 66-72.
  • Fritz Hennenberg : It must be something wonderful. Ralph Benatzky between “Weißen Rößl” and Hollywood . Zsolnay, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-552-04851-0 .
  • Ralph Benatzky: Triumph and sadness. From the diaries from 1919 to 1949 . Edited by Inge Jens and Christiane Niklew. Parthas, Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-932529-43-6 .
  • Ingrid Bigler-Marschall: Ralph Benatzky . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 1, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 154.
  • Kevin Clarke : Glitter and be Gay. The authentic operetta and its gay admirers . Hamburg 2007 (including several chapters on the White Horse Inn as well as Benatzky's other historical revue operettas, Casanova and Three Musketeers ).
  • Kevin Clarke: The Diaries of Dr. Ralph Benatzky. Between Berlin and Hollywood: A journey through time to the 20s , Duo-phon Records 2006 (audio book, read by Günter Barton).
  • Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. German business publisher, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 .
  • Fritz Hennenberg: Ralph Benatzky. Operetta on the way to becoming a musical. Life report and catalog raisonné . Edition Steinbauer, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-902494-38-2 .
  • Helmut Peter, Kevin Clarke: In the White Horse Inn - on the trail of a global success . St. Wolfgang 2007.
  • Hans-Dieter Roser :  Benatzky, Ralph . In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 . 2nd revised edition (online only).
  • Ulrich Tadday : In the White Horse Inn. Between art and commerce . Music Concepts, Vol. 133/134, Munich 2006.

Web links

Commons : Ralph Benatzky  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ October 16 is usually given as the day of death, e.g. B. in the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie (1987), in Reclam's Operettenführer (1982) or in aeiou . A minority mentions October 17th, e.g. B. IMDb and the dtv-Lexikon (1976), filmportal.de, however, gives October 10th as the death date .
  2. ↑ Christiane Niklew: Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians of the Nazi Era, 2007.
  3. ↑ www.ralph-benatzky.de, ibid.
  4. ↑ See Wolfgang Jansen: Brilliant revues of the twenties , Berlin 1987.
  5. ↑ cf. Christoph Wagner-Trenkwitz and Marie-Theres Arnbom : Grüß mich Gott! Fritz Grünbaum. A biography 1880–1941 , Vienna 2005.
  6. ↑ See the Charell essay In the intoxication of pleasures in Glitter and be Gay .
  7. ↑ Fritz Hennenberg: It must be something wonderful. Ralph Benatzky between “Weißen Rößl” and Hollywood . Zsolnay, Vienna 1998, p. 206.
  8. ↑ See Wolfgang Jansen, Cats & Co. The history of musicals in German-speaking theater , Berlin 2008.
  9. ↑ April 12, 1949: Awarded the Medal of Honor from the Federal Capital Vienna .
personal data
SURNAME Benatzky, Ralph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Benatzky, Rudolph Josef František (real name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION Austrian composer
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Moravian Budwitz
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1957
Place of death Zurich