Bruno Granichstaedten

Austrian composer of popular songs and operettas, born 1 September 1879 in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire, died 30 May 1944 in New York, New York, USA. The son of a lawyer who later became a playwright and literary critic, Granichstaedten showed a talent for music early on. His first compositions, a string quartet and two Lieder cycles, were awarded the Mendelssohn Award, which enabled him to study at the Leipzig Conservatory under Salomon Jadassohn (1831–1902) and Carl Reinecke. After initial appointments at theaters in Erfurt and Mannheim, Granichstaedten became third conductor at the Munich Court Theater in 1902. For political reasons, he was soon let go because he defended the work of Frank Wedeking in the satirical magazine "Simplicissimus" and performed himself as part of a satirical cabaret, "Die Drei Scharfrichter" (The Three Executioners). In 1905, Granichstaedten returned to Vienna, where he continued to perform in cabarets. His first operetta, "Bub oder Mädel" (Boy or Girl, 1908, with a libretto by Felix Dörmann and Adolf Altmann) was so successful that it was even performed on Broadway in New York, under the title "The Rose Maid". Other popular successes were "Auf Befehl der Herzogin" (At the Order of the Duchess, 1911) and "Der Orlow" (The Orlov, 1921), the first Viennese operetta with a jazz band in the orchestra pit. It describes the travails of an exiled Russian nobleman who works as a machinist in an American car factory. In the following years, Granichstaedten continued writing hit operettas and wrote film music. After the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Granichstaedten was briefly imprisoned because of his Jewish descent. Freed thanks to the intervention of well-known artist colleagues, he and his partner and later wife, Rosalie Kaufmann, were able to emigrate first to Luxembourg and then, in January 1940, to the United States. His attempts to continue to work in film did not work out, and he spent his last years playing piano in New York night clubs. Occasionally, he also accompanied performances of his wife at the piano and composed pieces for BMI.