Robert Stolz

For the Swedish football defender, see Robert Stoltz.

Bust of Robert Stolz in the Viennese City Park

Robert Elisabeth Stolz (August 25, 1880 – June 27, 1975) was an Austrian songwriter and conductor as well as a composer of operettas and film music.

Biography

The great-nephew of the soprano Teresa Stolz, Stolz was born of musical parents in Graz. His father was a conductor and his mother a concert pianist. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Robert Fuchs and Engelbert Humperdinck. From 1899 he held successive conducting posts at Maribor (then called Marburg), Salzburg and Brno before succeeding Artur Bodanzky at the Theater an der Wien in 1907. There he conducted, among other pieces, the first performance of Oscar Straus's Der tapfere Soldat (The Chocolate Soldier) in 1908, before leaving in 1910 to become a freelance composer and conductor. Meanwhile, he had begun to compose operettas and individual songs and had a number of successes in these fields.

After serving in the Austrian Army in World War I, Stolz devoted himself mainly to cabaret, and moved to Berlin in 1925. Around 1930, he started to compose music for films, such as the first German sound film Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt (Two Hearts in Waltz Time), of which the title-waltz rapidly became a popular favourite. Some earlier Stolz compositions, such as "Adieu, mein kleiner Gardeoffizier" from his operetta Die lustigen Weiber von Wien, became known to wider audiences through the medium of film.

The rise of Nazi Germany led Stolz to return to Vienna, where his title-song for the film Ungeküsst soll man nicht schlafen gehn was a hit, but then came the Anschluss, and he moved again, first to Zürich and then to Paris, where in 1939 he was interned as an enemy alien. With the help of friends he was released and in 1940 made his way to New York.

In America, Stolz achieved fame with his concerts of Viennese music, starting with "A Night in Vienna" at Carnegie Hall. As a result, he received many invitations to compose music for shows and films, and he received two Academy Awards nominations: "Waltzing in the Clouds" was nominated for Best Original Song in 1941, and his score for It Happened Tomorrow was nominated for Best Dramatic or Comedy Picture Score in 1945.

In 1946 Stolz returned to Vienna, where he lived for the rest of his life. In the 1960s and 1970s he made a number of recordings of operettas by composers such as Johann Strauss, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kalman, and Leo Fall, whom he had known previously.

In 1970, to mark his 90th birthday, he was made an Honorary Citizen of Vienna. He was also awarded Vienna's Grand Medal of Honour, being only the second musician ever to be so honoured (after Richard Strauss). He also appeared on a series of commemorative Austrian postage stamps.

In later years he used a baton inherited from Franz Lehár, that had been originally owned by Johann Strauss and contained Strauss's initials engraved in silver.

After his death in Berlin in 1975, Robert Stolz received the honour of a lying-in-state in the foyer of the Vienna State Opera House. He was buried near Johannes Brahms and Johann Strauss II in Vienna's Zentralfriedhof, and a statue to him was erected in the Wiener Stadtpark.

Selected operettas

Robert Stolz Memorial at the Prater

• Das Glücksmädel (1910)
• Der Tanz ins Glück (The Dance into Happiness) (1921)
• Im weißen Rößl (The White Horse Inn) (1930), jointly with Ralph Benatzky
• Wenn die kleinen Veilchen blühen (When the Little Violets Bloom or Wild Violets) (1932)
• Der verlorene Walzer, a stage version of the film Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt (1933)

Selected songs

• "Servus Du" (1912)
• "Wien wird erst schön bei Nacht"
• "Im Prater blühn wieder die Bäume"
• "Das ist der Frühling in Wien"
• "Du, du, du sollst der Kaiser meiner Seele sein." (1916)
• "Hallo, du süsse Klingelfee" (1919)
• "Salome, schönste Blume des Morgenlands"
• "Ich will deine Kameradin sein"
• "Die ganze Welt ist himmelblau"
• "Salome"
• "Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt"
• "Frag nicht warum ich gehe"

External links

• Biography and pictures of stamps
• Stolz's grave in Vienna
• Robert Stolz french web site
• Stolz at the Johann Strauss Society of Great Britain