Viktoria<\/em> premiered in Budapest on February 21, 1930.\u00a0 \u00a0Its German premiere was in Leipzig on July 7, 1930.\u00a0 By August 15, it had transferred to Berlin, where it became a huge hit, resulting in recordings of popular arrangements of its songs becoming hits in their own right.\u00a0 An English-language version of the show opened in London on September 17, 1931, with adapted lyrics by Harry Graham as heard on these recordings.<\/p>\nAbraham’s subsequent productions, Die Blume von Hawaii\u00a0<\/i>and Ball im Savoy<\/em>, were also highly successful.\u00a0 The December 23, 1932, premiere of\u00a0 Ball im Savoy<\/em> in Berlin is considered by many to have been the last major cultural event of Weimar Germany before Hitler took power the following month.\u00a0 Despite the production’s popularity, because Abraham and most of the artists associated with it were Jewish, it was forced to close in early April as a result of attacks on the theater and audience by thugs from Hitler’s Brownshirts paramilitary organization. Abraham had to flee Germany and eventually Europe.\u00a0 \u00a0His works were subsequently banned by the Nazi regime as “degenerate.”<\/p>\nBy the early 1940s, Abraham had relocated to Cuba and then the United States, where he had difficulty finding work.\u00a0 His mental health began to deteriorate to the point where he was famously seen standing on a New York City traffic island with his baton, believing that he was once again conducting an orchestra.\u00a0 Beginning in 1946, he spent 10 years in New York area psychiatric hospitals before friends and fans in Germany raised funds for his return to that country.<\/p>\n
After the war, Abraham’s works enjoyed a popular revival in 1950s\u00a0 Germany and are still well remembered and performed in German-speaking countries.\u00a0 Unfortunately, none of his productions made their way to the United States during their initial 1930s heyday, where they are still largely unknown.\u00a0 \u00a0Thus, period recordings of popular music adaptations of his songs almost always come from the United Kingdom or Europe, which I think is sad.\u00a0 In my opinion, his delightful and often haunting melodies place him among the ranks of the era’s best composers of popular music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Mausie” Layton And Johnstone October 1931\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0(Columbia DB 655 mx CA 12048) \u201cGoodnight\u201d Layton And Johnstone October 1931\u00a0 \u00a0 (Columbia DB 655 mx CA 12040) Here are two very nice British recordings courtesy of Matt from College … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2147,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":157,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,53,68,70,66,69,67],"class_list":["post-2146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1930s","tag-british-recordings","tag-clarence-tandy-johnstone","tag-hungarian-composers","tag-layton-and-johnstone","tag-paul-abraham","tag-turner-layton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2146"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2154,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146\/revisions\/2154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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