Sigmund Romberg

Sigmund Romberg was born Siegmund Rosenberg on July 29, 1887, in Gross-Kanizsa (Nagykanizsa), in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to a Jewish family headed by Adam and Clara Rosenberg. In 1889 the family relocated to Belišće, then part of Hungary, where Romberg attended primary school. Under his father's influence, he took up the violin at age six and the piano at age eight. He enrolled at the Osijek gymnasium in 1897 and participated in the school orchestra there. He later traveled to Vienna to study engineering while simultaneously pursuing composition lessons. In June 1909 he sailed from Southampton aboard the SS Oceanic, arriving in New York as a second-class cabin passenger. After a brief period working in a pencil factory, he found employment as a café and restaurant pianist.

Romberg eventually formed his own orchestra and published several songs, which attracted the attention of the Shubert brothers. In 1914 the Shuberts hired him to compose music for their Broadway productions, and that same year he wrote his first successful Broadway revue, The Whirl of the World. He contributed songs to the American adaptation of the Viennese operetta The Blue Paradise in 1915, and the following year provided material for The Passing Show of 1916 as well as Robinson Crusoe, Jr., an extravaganza burlesque written as a vehicle for Al Jolson. He continued supplying songs to Jolson vehicles with Sinbad in 1918 and Bombo in 1921, and also contributed to The Passing Show of 1918. Among his other Shubert-era Broadway credits are the revues A World of Pleasure and Doing Our Bit, as well as the productions Innocent and East Wind.

The musical Maytime in 1917 proved even more successful than The Blue Paradise, with both shows centering on love across generations and featuring nostalgic waltzes alongside contemporary American dance music. Romberg's adaptation of Franz Schubert melodies for Blossom Time in 1921, released in the United Kingdom as Lilac Time, was another substantial hit. That same year he wrote the music for Love Birds and collaborated with Richard Rodgers on the musical comedy Poor Little Ritz Girl. In 1925 he composed Princess Flavia, an operetta drawn from The Prisoner of Zenda.

The mid-1920s brought Romberg his most celebrated works. The Student Prince opened in 1924, followed by The Desert Song in 1926 and The New Moon in 1928, all three written in a style akin to the Viennese operettas of Franz Lehár. The New Moon featured lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, including the songs "Lover, Come Back to Me," "One Kiss," "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise," and "Stout Hearted Men," the first and third of which became jazz standards. Also in 1928, Romberg co-wrote Rosalie with George Gershwin. My Maryland, a romantic musical, appeared in 1927. May Wine followed in 1935, with lyrics by Hammerstein, built around a blackmail plot. Up in Central Park arrived in 1945, and in 1948 Romberg composed a new score for My Romance after the show had closed during tryouts. In addition to his stage work, he composed and adapted music for film.

Romberg married twice. His first wife, Eugenia, listed as Austrian on the 1920 federal census, is otherwise little documented. On March 28, 1925, he married Lillian Harris in Paterson, New Jersey; Harris was born March 8, 1898, and died April 15, 1967, in New York City. The couple had no children.

From 1945 to 1950, Columbia Records engaged Romberg to conduct orchestral recordings of his music, released on both 78-rpm and 33⅓-rpm discs. Naxos Records later remastered these recordings digitally for release in the United Kingdom. His music was also issued extensively on LP during the 1950s and 1960s by Columbia, Capitol, and RCA Victor. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, who starred in the 1940 MGM film adaptation of The New Moon, regularly performed and recorded his compositions; a 1930 film version of the same operetta had starred Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore. Romberg starred in the NBC radio program An Evening with Romberg from June 12, 1945, through August 31, 1948, airing mostly on Tuesdays at 10:30 pm. The program featured vocalists Anne Jamison, Reinhold Schmidt, and Robert Merrill, a 58-piece orchestra, and Frank Gallop as host and announcer, with programming that ranged from operatic arias and symphonic works to dance music and jazz. The 1954 film Deep in My Heart, directed by Stanley Donen, depicted Romberg's life with José Ferrer in the title role; it was adapted from Elliott Arnold's 1949 biography of the composer.

Romberg was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, the same year Belišće began holding musical evenings in his honor; Osijek initiated similar commemorations in 1995, and he was recognized as one of that city's meritorious and notable citizens. He died on November 9, 1951, at age 64, of a stroke in his suite at the Ritz Towers Hotel in New York City, and was interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.