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Show DEAN OF OPERETTA Romberg Has Composed Over Seventy Operettas and Musicals Sigmund Romberg, whose lile 1 story soon will be shown on the world's movie screens, is the kind of man who makes "highbrows' unhappy. He insists he is a "middle brow" composer and that he is happy being be-ing just that. For a man who bears the impressive label of. Dean of American operetta, it is a startling admission. "Most Americans have middle brow tastes in music. What's wrong with that?" he says in support of his statement that he'd rather write melodies with a sentiment and a tune that people can remember and whistle than heroic arias that almost al-most no one can sing without weeks of hectic practice. Since Romberg exiled himself to America 43 years ago to escape his parents' determination to make a bridge builder out of him, he is quite content to have the same tastes as most of the rest of the people in the United States. "Besides," he asks, "what highbrow high-brow achieves enough importance during his own life to merit a Hoi- Slgmnnd Romberg, dean of American Ameri-can operetta, who has composed more than 70 state and screen operettas op-erettas and musicals. His most popular pop-ular 'Include "Maytlme," "Stodenl Prince" and the "Desert Sonf." lywood movie treatment of his career while he is still around to see it?" Romberg will be able to see It as soon as Hollywood finishes the moxie it is now making. SIGMUND ROMBERG really might have built some beautiful bridges' if his parents had their way and he had become a construction construc-tion engineer. But instead, he has turned out more than 70 stage and screen operettas and musicals, among them standards like "May-time," "May-time," "Student Prince" and the "Desert Song," one or the other of which is still touring somewhere el olmrtc onw imo TTa Vias writ- ten a magnificent total of 2,000 songs like "Lover, Come Back to Me." And he isn't finished yet! "There is lots more music to be written lots of it in me and I am writing it," he explains. Right now, he is composing another an-other musical which he expects to have on Broadway this winter. Some composers compose their songs on a piano, some in their head. Romberg composes most of his music on a Hammond organ, so that he can get the effect of the entire orchestra as he tests a melody mel-ody on the Hammond. He used to do it on a pipe organ, sitting in solitary sol-itary majesty before the gigantic instrument. When the Hammond organ was invented, he got one of the first made. Since then he has been using it to turn out the kind of music that fits in with America's Ameri-ca's heart beat. IT WAS IN VIENNA that he got his first formal music education. Finishing his schooling in Vienna, he had to serve his term in the army. When that was finished, the crisis came. His father, though very musical himself, was determined deter-mined his son was going to be an engineer and build bridges. The peace maker in the dispute that arose was his mother who suggested sug-gested that he spend a year in America before making a decision. America had a lot of fine bridges, she figured, and maybe her son would learn to love bridges over rivers more than musical bridges. It didn't work. Romberg came to the United States, went to work packing pencils in a pencil factory for a brjef period and then got a job as a pianist in a restaurant he had stopped at to satisfy his craving for Hungarian goulash. That was the beginning. The next steps in his career came in rapid succession. He organized his own orchestra, played at a fashionable New York restaurant and began composing in earnest. He never got around to thinking of the bridges again. Let the highbrows high-brows build the bridges, he decided. Instead, he wrote enough music to make him probably the most prolific pro-lific of the big-time composers in the theater. |