Srećko (Felix) Albini (10 December 1869 – 18 April 1933) was a

Croatian Croatian may refer to: * Croatia *Croatian language *Croatian people *Croatians (demonym) See also * * * Croatan (disambiguation) * Croatia (disambiguation) * Croatoan (disambiguation) * Hrvatski (disambiguation) * Hrvatsko (disambiguation) * S ...

composer, conductor, and music publisher. He was primarily known for his operettas, some of which were adapted into English and performed in London and New York.

Life and career

Albini was born in

Županja Županja (, hu, Zsupanya, german: Schaupanie) is a town in eastern Slavonia, Croatia, located 254 km east of Zagreb. It is administratively part of the Vukovar-Syrmia County. It is inhabited by 12,090 people (2011). Županja lies on the Sa ...

. He trained in music in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and in

Graz Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popu ...

, but at the wishes of his family also graduated from a business college. His first engagement as a conductor was for the municipal theatres in Graz, where he worked from 1893 to 1895. He then became a conductor at the Croatian National Theatre in

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital and largest city of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb stands near the international border between Croatia and Sl ...

, where he remained for the next eight years and composed his first stage work, the three-act opera ''Maričon''. Set to a libretto by Milan Smrekar, it had a nationalistic theme and incorporated traditional

Croatian folk music The music of Croatia, like the divisions of the country itself, has two major influences: Central European, present in central and northern parts of the country including Slavonia, and Mediterranean, present in coastal regions of Dalmatia and ...

and

dances Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire ...

. ''Maričon'' premiered at the Croatian National Theatre in 1901 and received a very favourable review from ''

Die Musik ''Die Musik'' was a German music magazine established in 1901 by Bernhard Schuster (1870–1934). It was published semimonthly by Schuster & Loeffler from Berlin and Leipzig. Schuster was its editor-in-chief from inception until July 1933, when t ...

''. The National Theatre's resident opera company suspended its activities between 1903 and 1909, and Albini moved to Vienna, where he continued composing and conducting. He returned to the National Theatre in 1909, serving there as both a conductor and a stage director until 1919. However, he had ceased his activities as a composer after 1909. Albini went on to become a music publisher and also founded and ran the Croatian Copyright Centre. He died in Zagreb at the age of 63.

Works

According to the Croatian musicologist Ivan Zivanović, Albini's music combined "an exuberant melodic invention and skillful sense of drama

hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mech ...

transcended the musical and dramatic limitations characteristic of operetta of his time." Albini's operettas include: *''Der Nabob'', operetta in 3 acts, libretto by Leopold Krenn; premiered at the

Carltheater The Carltheater was a theatre in Vienna. It was in the suburbs in Leopoldstadt at Praterstraße 31 (at that time called Jägerzeile). It was the successor to the Leopoldstädter Theater. After a series of financial difficulties, that theater had b ...

, Vienna, 1905 *''Madame Troubadour'', vaudeville-operetta in 3 acts, libretto by Béla Jenbach and

Robert Pohl Robert Wichard Pohl (10 August 1884 – 5 June 1976) was a German physicist at the University of Göttingen. Nevill Francis Mott described him as the "father of solid state physics". See also: "Components of the solid state", Nevill Mott, New Scie ...

; premiered at the Croatian National Theatre, Zagreb, 1907 *''

Baron Trenck ''Baron Trenck'' is a comic opera in three acts loosely based on the life of Baron Franz von der Trenck. The original German-language work was composed by Felix Albini to a libretto by Alfred Maria Willner and Robert Bodanzky and premiered at th ...

'', comic operetta in 3 acts, libretto by

Alfred Maria Willner Alfred Maria Willner (11 July 1859 – 27 October 1929) was an Austrian writer, philosopher, musicologist, composer and librettist. Biography Alfred Maria Willner was born and died in Vienna. He began composing mostly music for the piano and even ...

and

Robert Bodanzky Robert Bodanzky, also known as Danton (born Isidor Bodanskie, 8 March 1879 – 2 November 1923), was an Austrian journalist, playwright, poet and artist. While he became famous for his apolitical poems before World War I, he turned an anarchist ...

; premiered at the Altes Stadttheater,

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, 1908 *''Die Barfußtänzerin'', operetta in 2 acts, libretto by Béla Jenbach; premiered at the Altes Stadttheater, Leipzig, 1909 *''Die kleine Baronesse'', operetta in 1 act, libretto by Robert Bodanzky; premiered at the , Vienna, 1909

Notes

References

External links

Complete score of Albini's ''Madame Troubadour''
at the

International Music Score Library Project The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a subscription-based digital library of public-domain music scores. The project, which uses MediaWiki softwar ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Albini, Srecko 1869 births 1933 deaths Croatian classical composers Croatian male classical composers Croatian musical theatre composers Operetta composers Musicians from Austria-Hungary