Imre Kalman

Imre (Emmerich) Kalman (24 October 1882 – 30 October 1953) was a Hungarian composer best known for his highly popular operettas, including “Sylva” (“The Csardas Princess”), “The Bayadere”, “The Circus Princess”, and “The Violet of Montmartre”. His work is often seen as bringing to a close the flourishing era of Viennese operetta, combining elegant theatrical craft with characteristic Hungarian color.

He was born in Siofok on Lake Balaton (then Austria-Hungary, now Hungary) into a Jewish family. His father was the Budapest-born merchant Karl Koppstein, and Kalman adopted the surname “Kalman” while still at grammar school. His mother, Paula Kalman-Koppstein (née Singer), was from Varazdin. He initially trained as a pianist, but arthritis forced him to turn to composition.

Kalman graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where his fellow students included Bela Bartok, Albert Szirmai, and Zoltan Kodaly. In 1904 he worked as a music critic for the Budapest newspaper “Pesti Naplo” while composing intensively. Although his romances and orchestral works did not gain wide success, a song cycle won the Grand Prize of the city of Budapest, and on the advice of his friend, composer Viktor Jacobi, he decided to focus on operetta.

His first operetta, “Tatar Invasion” (Hungarian “Tatárjárás”, 1908, Budapest), was enthusiastically received and soon staged in Vienna, New York, and London (as “Autumn Maneuvers”). In 1908 he moved to Vienna and consolidated his position with “The Gypsy-Priate” (“Der Zigeunerprimás”, 1912). In 1915 he produced his most famous work, “The Csardas Princess” (“Sylva”), which was performed even on the opposite side of the First World War front, including in Russia with altered character names and setting.

During the 1920s Kalman enjoyed major successes with “The Bayadere” (1921), where he expanded beyond his customary waltzes and csardas to incorporate newer dance rhythms such as the foxtrot and shimmy, followed by “Countess Maritza” (1924) and “The Circus Princess” (1926). In 1929 he married Vera Makinskaya, a young actress and emigrant from Perm, later dedicating “The Violet of Montmartre” to her; they had a son, Karoly, and two daughters, Lili and Ivonka. In 1934 he was awarded the French Legion of Honour.

After the Anschluss of Austria, Kalman rejected an offer to become an “honorary Aryan” and emigrated with his family, first to Paris in 1938 and then to the United States in 1940. His operettas were banned in Nazi Germany, and two of his sisters died in concentration camps. He divorced Vera in 1942 but reconciled with her a few months later. After the defeat of Nazism, he visited Europe in the winter of 1948/1949, placed a wreath on Franz Lehar’s grave, and returned to the United States.

In 1949 a stroke left him partially paralyzed. His health later improved somewhat, and in 1951, at Vera’s insistence, he moved to Paris, where he died two years later. According to his will he was buried in Vienna’s Central Cemetery, near the graves of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart. His final operetta, “Arizona Lady”, was completed by his son and premiered on 1 January 1954 at the City Theatre of Bern.

Kalman’s music is renowned within operetta for its festive brilliance, polished melody, and refined orchestration. Even when his stories featured non-Hungarian characters and settings, his scores remained permeated with Hungarian motifs; among his works, “Countess Maritza” is often regarded as the most distinctly Hungarian. His legacy has been commemorated in many ways, including the naming of asteroid (4992) Kalman, a museum and monument in Siofok, a memorial room in the Austrian National Library, and an Austrian postage stamp issued in 1982. A melody from “The Violet of Montmartre” was also adapted as the basis for an Icelandic football anthem (“Ég er kominn heim”).

Connections

This figure has 1 connection in the art history graph.