Sigmund Romberg

Sigmund Romberg (July 29, 1887 – November 9, 1951) was an Austro-Hungarian composer who spent most of his adult life in the United States. He is best known for his musicals and operettas, particularly The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928).

Early in his career, Romberg was employed by the Shubert brothers to write music for their musicals and revues, including several vehicles for Al Jolson. For the Shuberts, he also adapted several European operettas for American audiences, including the successful Maytime (1917) and Blossom Time (1921). His three hit operettas of the mid-1920s, named above, are in the style of Viennese operetta, but his other works, from that time, mostly employ the style of American musicals of their eras. He also composed film scores.

Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family, Adam and Clara Rosenberg, in Gross-Kanizsa (Hungarian: Nagykanizsa) during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich (Imperial and Royal) monarchy period. In 1889 Romberg and his family moved to Belišće, which was then in Hungary, where he attended a primary school. Influenced by his father, Romberg learned to play the violin at six, and piano at eight years of age. He enrolled at Osijek gymnasium in 1897, where he was a member of the high school orchestra. He went to Vienna to study engineering, but he also took composition lessons while living there. He moved to the United States in 1909 and, after a brief stint working in a pencil factory, was employed as a pianist in cafés.

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