Family and childhood
In Vienna
Exile
Return

FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD
Born Imre Koppstein in the Lake Balatron resort town of Siófok, Hungary, southeast, of Budapest on October 24, 1882, the composer of Countess Maritza came from an upper- middle class family. His father was a businessman from a family of rabbis and teachers, and his mother came from a family of musicians. The town was a mecca for artists and musicians and had a summer festival. Their house was next door to the Summer Theatre, and the boy became fascinated with the activities there. Although he was identified as a musical prodigy by the time he was five, until he was six, he wanted to be a tailor. He took music lessons from a famous violinist who roomed in their house, and he also became the top boy at the Jewish public school. (Many Christians sent their children there because German, the language of Austria and the Habsburg court, was taught, not just Hungarian.)

When his father suffered financial reverses, the family moved to Budapest where the boy attended high school and, while there, changed his name to Emmerich Kálmán. At the same time he went to a music school and gave piano lessons to help support his family. He wanted to become a concert pianist but an inflamed tendon in his hand forced him to give that up.

By the time Kálmán was eighteen he was studying law at the University and, once again, pursuing two simultaneous courses, also studying composition at the Budapest Academy of Music where Belá Bartók and Zoltán Kodály were among his fellow students. He dropped out of law school just before finishing, worked as répétiteur in Budapest, became a music critic for one of the newspapers, and also started composing.

IN VIENNA
Kálmán's early works included symphonic poems and cabaret poems, and he was awarded the Franz Josef prize in 1907 for his songs. He also studied in Bayreuth, Munich and Berlin. However, he could not make a living as a song writer. He tried to compose symphonies and, when not successfu,l said: "If things go on like this I will do something terrible. I will compose operettas". He laughed and did turn to operetta. His first attempt, when he was twenty-seven, Tátárjárás (The Gay Hussar) was successful in Budapest, and managers from Vienna brought it to the Theater an der Wien, the same theatre in which Countess Maritza was to open fifteen years later. A great success there, Tátárjárás ran for 265 performances and reached New York later that same year. It was the first Hungarian operetta to be given in France; Kálmán's course was set. He decided to settle in Vienna where successes followed one after the other.

He met Paula Dvorzsák, ten years his senior and they lived together for seventeen years. She spent the last ten years of her life in a wheelchair. He then met Vera Makinskaya a young Russian, actress thirty years his junior, fell in love with her, and they married. They had three children a boy and two girls.

His 1915 Die Csárdásfürstin (The Gypsy Princess), one of his most successful works, was described by a critic: "[Kálmán] at the same time stands with one foot in the Hungarian soil, and the other in the dance halls from which the Viennese waltz came". This combination of Austrian and Hungarian themes made his work unique and very popular. The article on him in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera says his music has a rich vein of natural melody, mixing the Viennese waltz with the Hungarian style. An article in Opera News called his work a blend of paprika and Schlagobers (Hungarian spice and Viennese whipped cream). In a tribute, Richard Bonynge who has conducted frequently in San Diego said: "The music never palls. It has a freshness which speaks directly to the heart". There is also a strong Gypsy influence. Orchestrations used full orchestras with added instruments such as the glockenspiel, harp, celesta, cimbalom and the native Hungarian tárogáto. The chorus is important and the finales are particularly well constructed.

All of Kálmán's major successes had 'Hungarian' settings and the others had some Hungarian influences. (Countess Maritza is actually set in another Balkan country "near the Hungarian border" but the ambience is all Hungarian). In his last work, set in Arizona, the heroine is a Hungarian.

EXILE
At beginning of World War I Kálmän was working on Die Csárdásfürstin, and it opened in the middle of war. The United States had been willing to accept him there, but he stayed in Vienna because of the death of his brother and the illnesses of father and girl friend Paula. He remained until the Anschluss (March 12, 1938) and the beginning of the persecution of Jews. In 1939 he was helped by the Hungarian administrator for the Third Reich to move to Paris. He had to leave most of his possessions behind, and his large residence in Vienna was stripped.*

When the Germans occupied Paris, he escaped to the United States via Portugal and Mexico and ended in Hollywood. He hoped to write screen music. Although that did not happen, he continued to write operettas. He was awarded honorary doctoral degree by Columbia University and became an American citizen when Hungary allied itself with Hitler.

RETURN
While in America Kálmán learned his sister had been murdered by the Nazis. He suffered a heart attack and never really regained his health. He finally returned to Paris on June 5, 1949 and, except for a brief visit to Austria, lived there until his death in 1953. He was given a state funeral in Vienna and is buried in the Central Cemetery there. His final composition, Arizona Lady, was given posthumously in 1954 in Bern, Switzerland. (It was finished by his son Charles, also a composer of operettas.) He was awarded the French Legion of Honor. On the hundredth anniversary of his birth there were celebrations in Budapest and Vienna presided over by his widow. On the fortieth anniversary of his death he was given the posthumous freedom of his hometown of Siófok, a statue was erected in the Music Pavilion, and a museum established in his childhood house. His Vienna house, which was a military hospital during the war, is now a music student hostel.

In a sense, Kálmán was an anachronism. Ten years younger than his countryman Lehár, he continued writing traditional operettas, but was himself only a few years older than Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers who revolutionized the American musical. His music was a mixture of Viennese and Hungarian with a more Hungarian fervor than that of Lehár. The son of his librettist, Grünwald, called him "a man of dour, notoriously pessimistic personality and great business acumen". He was apparently very different from his romantic works, quiet, modest and thoroughly professional. His work was, and is popular throughout Europe, and he has been represented on Broadway by ten works with over 1,650 performances, more than any other European composer. Yet unlike that of Johann Strauss II and Franz Lehár, his name has remained almost unknown to most Americans of today.
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* A rather bizarre footnote: Kálmán had been decorated by the anti-Semitic, pro-Fascist head-of-state, Nicolas Harthy of Hungary, who advised him to leave Europe. Hitler was so impressed with his music that he offered the the composer honorary Aryan status, but he refused it. His daughter Yvonne said he was approached by a general of the Third Reich with the offer. When Kálmán asked the general how he could guarantee his safety, the hel said with his own life. But the composer asked, "Who can guarantee your life?" and left; his music was banned by Nazis.

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Revised April 2009
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