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Wikipedia

Kurt Gänzl

Kurt-Friedrich Gänzl (born 15 February 1946) is a New Zealand writer, historian and former casting director and singer best known for his books about musical theatre.

Kurt Gänzl
Kurt Gänzl in 2018
Born
Brian Roy Gallas

(1946-02-15) 15 February 1946 (age 76)
Alma materUniversity of Canterbury
Occupation(s)Writer, historian
Former casting director and singer
Notable workThe Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre (1994, 2001)
PartnerIan Bevan (died 2006)
RelativesJohn Gallas (brother)

After a decade-long playwriting, acting and singing career, and a second career as a casting director of West End shows, Gänzl became one of the world's most important chroniclers of musical theatre history.[1] According to Christophe Mirambeau of Canal Académie, "Kurt Gänzl is an institution. No one interested in musicals and operetta can ignore that. He is the world reference – with some few others, like Gerald Bordman, Ken Bloom, or Andrew Lamb – for that subject."[2] He has written more than a dozen books on musical theatre topics, as well as blogs and articles about musicals, light opera and people, especially of the Victorian era, involved with the musical stage. He has also translated French poetry.

Early life and career

Gänzl was born Brian Roy Gallas[3] in Wellington, New Zealand, and is of Austrian descent, the son of Frederick, né Fritz Eduard Gänzl, an educator who moved to New Zealand before World War II and became Headmaster of Wellington Technical College and who adopted the name Fred Gallas, and his wife Nancy, née Agnes Ada Welsh.[3][4] He studied law and classics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, receiving a master's degree in 1967 while performing as a radio and concert vocalist.[2]

Early in his career, Gänzl wrote plays. His one-act plays Elektra and The Women of Troy were produced in New Zealand in 1966 and 1967 by Elmwood Players. The latter play won the British Drama League (Drama magazine) award in 1967.[3] The next year, Gänzl joined the New Zealand Opera Company as a bass soloist.[2] After the company closed in 1968, he moved to London and studied for a year at the London Opera Centre. For several more years, he worked as a performer, including a 1969 season in the hit London show, The Black and White Minstrels,[5] and afterwards in Monte Carlo and on cruise ships. His last show was the 1974 production of Tommy Steele's adaptation of Hans Andersen at the London Palladium.[6] Throughout the 1980s, together with his domestic partner, the theatrical agent Ian Bevan, he worked as a talent agent and as a casting director for Harold Fielding on over a dozen musicals and plays in London's West End theatres and for musical and operatic productions in Europe, Australia and America.[2][7]

Writing and later years

While still working as a casting director, Gänzl began writing theatre reference works. In 1986 he published his two-volume history, The British Musical Theatre (1986), which won the Roger Machell Prize for the year's best performing-arts book and the British Library Association's McColvin Medal for the outstanding reference work (any subject) of its season.[3] This was followed by Gänzl's Book of the Musical Theatre (1988 with Andrew Lamb), The Blackwell Guide to the Musical Theater on Record (1989). At the end of the 1980s, Gänzl moved to St. Paul de Vence in the south of France with Bevan to concentrate on writing full-time.[7] In the 1990s, he published The Complete 'Aspects of Love' (1990), five editions of Musicals (1995; US: Song and Dance: The Complete Story of Stage Musicals), and The Musical: A Concise History (1997).

The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre

Gänzl's seminal reference work, The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre, was published in 1994 and greatly expanded in a second edition in 2001. It was a Dartmouth Medal honoree in 1995 and was awarded "Outstanding Reference Source" in 1997 by the American Library Association. Theatre historian John Kenrick wrote: "Only serious research libraries carry this set listing thousands of shows and individuals. This expanded update of the 1995 original edition is the best source to date on European musicals, with solid coverage of Broadway too."[8] Another critic calls it "the most exhaustive study anyone has yet made of musicals, and it is difficult to imagine it being done in a better or more thorough way."[9]

The Times wrote, "So, with The Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre, Kurt Gänzl ... has transcended all rivals. His work embraces not only Broadway and Shaftesbury Avenue, but Vienna and Budapest, Paris and Rome, Sydney and Toronto. He even apologises for including only three New Zealand entries. If there is a musical production of any kind that he does not know about, then it is odds-on that nobody else does either."[10] Gänzl has said, "My goals are to make the musical theater a respectable academic subject and to put the musical theater into its international context. I want to bring the so-called 'musical' and 'operetta' back together as part of the same art form and to dispel some of the early myths and quasi-historical errors and distortions that have become accepted as part of musical theater history."[3]

Later years

In the early 2000s, Gänzl and Bevan moved to a home in Sefton, New Zealand, where Gänzl completed biographies of Victorian burlesque queen Lydia Thompson, Broadway author William B. Gill and Victorian singing star Emily Soldene, and in 2017 a compendium of 100 biographies titled Victorian Vocalists.[11] After Bevan's death in 2006, Gänzl spent time as a musical critic in Berlin, Germany, and then lived in Yamba, Australia.[12]

Gänzl has published more than a dozen books on musical theatre and contributed many biographical entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies and Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He has also published biographies elsewhere, such as for Theatre Heritage Australia.[1] Since 2007 he has contributed more than a thousand entries about Victorian and Edwardian singers, actors and musical theatre works, on his blog Kurt of Gerolstein.[13] Over the years he has also worked with his younger brother, the poet John Gallas[12][14] on translations of Baudelaire,[15] Verhaeren,[16] Materlinck, Yourcenar, Anna de Noailles, Nerval, Florian and others, including Borel's Rhapsodies (2022).[16][17]

Gänzl has an avid interest in the sport of harness racing and has owned and bred racehorses.[11]

Books

  • 1986: The British Musical Theatre (2 vols.; Macmillan Press) ISBN 0-19-520509-X
  • 1988: Gänzl's Book of the Musical Theatre (with Andrew Lamb; Bodley Head/Schirmer) ISBN 0-02-871941-7
  • 1989: The Blackwell Guide to the Musical Theatre on Record. Blackwell ISBN 0-631-16517-7
  • 1990: The Complete "Aspects of Love" (Aurum Press) ISBN 0-670-83192-1
  • 1994: The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre (Blackwell/Schirmer; 2 vols, expanded in 2001 to 3 vols.) ISBN 0-02-864970-2
  • 1995: Musicals: the Illustrated Story (Carlton) ISBN 0-7475-2381-9
    • 1995 (US edition of same): Song and Dance: The Complete Story of Stage Musicals (Smithmark Publishers) ISBN 0-8317-1890-0
  • 1995: Gänzl's Book of the Broadway Musical (Schirmer; Macmillan) ISBN 0-02-870832-6
  • 1997: The Musical: A Concise History (Boston: Northeastern University Press ISBN 1-55553-311-6
  • 2002: Lydia Thompson: Queen of Burlesque (NY & London: Routledge) ISBN 0-415-93766-3
  • 2002: William B. Gill: From the Gold Fields to Broadway (Routledge) ISBN 0-415-93767-1
  • 2007: Emily Soldene: In Search of a Singer (Steele Roberts) ISBN 978-1-877338-72-4
  • 2017: Victorian Vocalists (Taylor and Francis) ISBN 978-1-1381-0317-7
  • 2021: Gilbert and Sullivan: The Players and the Plays (State University of New York Press) ISBN 978-1-4384-8545-4
  • 2022: Rhapsodies 1831: Petrus Borel translated with John Gallas (Carcanet Classics) ISBN 978-1800172203
  • 2022: The Musical: A Concise History (2022 version) with Jamie Findlay (State University of New York Press) ISBN 978-1-4384-8751-9

References

  1. ^ a b "Kurt Gänzl", Theatre Heritage Australia, 2 September 2020
  2. ^ a b c d Mirambeau, Christophe. "Kurt Gänzl and Emily Soldene (1840–1912)", Canal Académie, 17 June 2007, accessed 8 May 2018
  3. ^ a b c d e Kurt Ganzl at Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002 (subscription required). Accessed 22 March 2009
  4. ^ Gänzl, Kurt. "Gänzl"; and "The family hits Broadway and Hollywood!", Kurt of Gerolstein, 29 September 2011 and 24 December 2016, respectively, both accessed 16 July 2020
  5. ^ Gänzl, Kurt. "The Magic of the Minstrels", Kurt of Gerolstein, 5 July 2017
  6. ^ "The Singers", Palladium Theatre programme (1974); Hans Anderson, Guide to Musical Theatre, accessed 21 January 2010
  7. ^ a b Gänzl, Kurt. "A Magical Musical", Kurt of Gerolstein, 28 February 2014, accessed 16 July 2020
  8. ^ Kenrick, John. "Suggested Reading", Musicals 101: The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, TV and Film (2004)
  9. ^ O'Connor, Patrick. The Times Literary Supplement, 3 November 1995
  10. ^ Green, Benny. "All-singing, all-dancing haul of fame", The Times, 2 May 1994
  11. ^ a b Gänzl, Kurt. "Elena is a racehorse", Kurt of Gerolstein, 13 December 2008, accessed 8 May 2018
  12. ^ a b Gänzl, Kurt. "The Ages of an Author", Kurt of Gerolstein, 2 October 2020; The Times, 2 January 2007, p. 48; and Newley, Patrick. Ian Bevan obituary, The Stage, 8 December 2006
  13. ^ Gänzl, Kurt. "Kurt of Gerolstein", BlogSpot.com, accessed 25 June 2020
  14. ^ "John Gallas", Carcanet Press, accessed 29 April 2014
  15. ^ Rumens, Carol. "Poem of the week: 'Cat' by John Gallas", The Guardian, 1 December 2014
  16. ^ a b "Ten Poems (translated by John Gallas and Kurt Ganzl)", PNReview 186, Vol. 35, No 4, March – April 2009
  17. ^ Zubair, Sarah-Jane. "Ecstatic and intoxicate", review of Rhapsodies 1831: Petrus Borel, The Times Literary Supplement, 30 September 2022

External links

  • Photos of Gänzl as a young man
  • Gänzl's activities after 1970
  • cartoon drawing of Gänzl
  • Vocals by Gänzl (1988): "Love Could I Only Tell Thee" (from The Geisha, 1896) – YouTube

kurt, gänzl, kurt, friedrich, gänzl, born, february, 1946, zealand, writer, historian, former, casting, director, singer, best, known, books, about, musical, theatre, 2018bornbrian, gallas, 1946, february, 1946, wellington, zealandalma, materuniversity, canter. Kurt Friedrich Ganzl born 15 February 1946 is a New Zealand writer historian and former casting director and singer best known for his books about musical theatre Kurt GanzlKurt Ganzl in 2018BornBrian Roy Gallas 1946 02 15 15 February 1946 age 76 Wellington New ZealandAlma materUniversity of CanterburyOccupation s Writer historianFormer casting director and singerNotable workThe Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre 1994 2001 PartnerIan Bevan died 2006 RelativesJohn Gallas brother After a decade long playwriting acting and singing career and a second career as a casting director of West End shows Ganzl became one of the world s most important chroniclers of musical theatre history 1 According to Christophe Mirambeau of Canal Academie Kurt Ganzl is an institution No one interested in musicals and operetta can ignore that He is the world reference with some few others like Gerald Bordman Ken Bloom or Andrew Lamb for that subject 2 He has written more than a dozen books on musical theatre topics as well as blogs and articles about musicals light opera and people especially of the Victorian era involved with the musical stage He has also translated French poetry Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Writing and later years 2 1 The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre 2 2 Later years 3 Books 4 References 5 External linksEarly life and career EditGanzl was born Brian Roy Gallas 3 in Wellington New Zealand and is of Austrian descent the son of Frederick ne Fritz Eduard Ganzl an educator who moved to New Zealand before World War II and became Headmaster of Wellington Technical College and who adopted the name Fred Gallas and his wife Nancy nee Agnes Ada Welsh 3 4 He studied law and classics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand receiving a master s degree in 1967 while performing as a radio and concert vocalist 2 Early in his career Ganzl wrote plays His one act plays Elektra and The Women of Troy were produced in New Zealand in 1966 and 1967 by Elmwood Players The latter play won the British Drama League Drama magazine award in 1967 3 The next year Ganzl joined the New Zealand Opera Company as a bass soloist 2 After the company closed in 1968 he moved to London and studied for a year at the London Opera Centre For several more years he worked as a performer including a 1969 season in the hit London show The Black and White Minstrels 5 and afterwards in Monte Carlo and on cruise ships His last show was the 1974 production of Tommy Steele s adaptation of Hans Andersen at the London Palladium 6 Throughout the 1980s together with his domestic partner the theatrical agent Ian Bevan he worked as a talent agent and as a casting director for Harold Fielding on over a dozen musicals and plays in London s West End theatres and for musical and operatic productions in Europe Australia and America 2 7 Writing and later years EditWhile still working as a casting director Ganzl began writing theatre reference works In 1986 he published his two volume history The British Musical Theatre 1986 which won the Roger Machell Prize for the year s best performing arts book and the British Library Association s McColvin Medal for the outstanding reference work any subject of its season 3 This was followed by Ganzl s Book of the Musical Theatre 1988 with Andrew Lamb The Blackwell Guide to the Musical Theater on Record 1989 At the end of the 1980s Ganzl moved to St Paul de Vence in the south of France with Bevan to concentrate on writing full time 7 In the 1990s he published The Complete Aspects of Love 1990 five editions of Musicals 1995 US Song and Dance The Complete Story of Stage Musicals and The Musical A Concise History 1997 The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre Edit Ganzl s seminal reference work The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre was published in 1994 and greatly expanded in a second edition in 2001 It was a Dartmouth Medal honoree in 1995 and was awarded Outstanding Reference Source in 1997 by the American Library Association Theatre historian John Kenrick wrote Only serious research libraries carry this set listing thousands of shows and individuals This expanded update of the 1995 original edition is the best source to date on European musicals with solid coverage of Broadway too 8 Another critic calls it the most exhaustive study anyone has yet made of musicals and it is difficult to imagine it being done in a better or more thorough way 9 The Times wrote So with The Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre Kurt Ganzl has transcended all rivals His work embraces not only Broadway and Shaftesbury Avenue but Vienna and Budapest Paris and Rome Sydney and Toronto He even apologises for including only three New Zealand entries If there is a musical production of any kind that he does not know about then it is odds on that nobody else does either 10 Ganzl has said My goals are to make the musical theater a respectable academic subject and to put the musical theater into its international context I want to bring the so called musical and operetta back together as part of the same art form and to dispel some of the early myths and quasi historical errors and distortions that have become accepted as part of musical theater history 3 Later years Edit In the early 2000s Ganzl and Bevan moved to a home in Sefton New Zealand where Ganzl completed biographies of Victorian burlesque queen Lydia Thompson Broadway author William B Gill and Victorian singing star Emily Soldene and in 2017 a compendium of 100 biographies titled Victorian Vocalists 11 After Bevan s death in 2006 Ganzl spent time as a musical critic in Berlin Germany and then lived in Yamba Australia 12 Ganzl has published more than a dozen books on musical theatre and contributed many biographical entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies and Grove s Dictionary of Music and Musicians He has also published biographies elsewhere such as for Theatre Heritage Australia 1 Since 2007 he has contributed more than a thousand entries about Victorian and Edwardian singers actors and musical theatre works on his blog Kurt of Gerolstein 13 Over the years he has also worked with his younger brother the poet John Gallas 12 14 on translations of Baudelaire 15 Verhaeren 16 Materlinck Yourcenar Anna de Noailles Nerval Florian and others including Borel s Rhapsodies 2022 16 17 Ganzl has an avid interest in the sport of harness racing and has owned and bred racehorses 11 Books Edit1986 The British Musical Theatre 2 vols Macmillan Press ISBN 0 19 520509 X 1988 Ganzl s Book of the Musical Theatre with Andrew Lamb Bodley Head Schirmer ISBN 0 02 871941 7 1989 The Blackwell Guide to the Musical Theatre on Record Blackwell ISBN 0 631 16517 7 1990 The Complete Aspects of Love Aurum Press ISBN 0 670 83192 1 1994 The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre Blackwell Schirmer 2 vols expanded in 2001 to 3 vols ISBN 0 02 864970 2 1995 Musicals the Illustrated Story Carlton ISBN 0 7475 2381 9 1995 US edition of same Song and Dance The Complete Story of Stage Musicals Smithmark Publishers ISBN 0 8317 1890 0 1995 Ganzl s Book of the Broadway Musical Schirmer Macmillan ISBN 0 02 870832 6 1997 The Musical A Concise History Boston Northeastern University Press ISBN 1 55553 311 6 2002 Lydia Thompson Queen of Burlesque NY amp London Routledge ISBN 0 415 93766 3 2002 William B Gill From the Gold Fields to Broadway Routledge ISBN 0 415 93767 1 2007 Emily Soldene In Search of a Singer Steele Roberts ISBN 978 1 877338 72 4 2017 Victorian Vocalists Taylor and Francis ISBN 978 1 1381 0317 7 2021 Gilbert and Sullivan The Players and the Plays State University of New York Press ISBN 978 1 4384 8545 4 2022 Rhapsodies 1831 Petrus Borel translated with John Gallas Carcanet Classics ISBN 978 1800172203 2022 The Musical A Concise History 2022 version with Jamie Findlay State University of New York Press ISBN 978 1 4384 8751 9References Edit a b Kurt Ganzl Theatre Heritage Australia 2 September 2020 a b c d Mirambeau Christophe Kurt Ganzl and Emily Soldene 1840 1912 Canal Academie 17 June 2007 accessed 8 May 2018 a b c d e Kurt Ganzl at Contemporary Authors Online Gale 2002 subscription required Accessed 22 March 2009 Ganzl Kurt Ganzl and The family hits Broadway and Hollywood Kurt of Gerolstein 29 September 2011 and 24 December 2016 respectively both accessed 16 July 2020 Ganzl Kurt The Magic of the Minstrels Kurt of Gerolstein 5 July 2017 The Singers Palladium Theatre programme 1974 Hans Anderson Guide to Musical Theatre accessed 21 January 2010 a b Ganzl Kurt A Magical Musical Kurt of Gerolstein 28 February 2014 accessed 16 July 2020 Kenrick John Suggested Reading Musicals 101 The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre TV and Film 2004 O Connor Patrick The Times Literary Supplement 3 November 1995 Green Benny All singing all dancing haul of fame The Times 2 May 1994 a b Ganzl Kurt Elena is a racehorse Kurt of Gerolstein 13 December 2008 accessed 8 May 2018 a b Ganzl Kurt The Ages of an Author Kurt of Gerolstein 2 October 2020 The Times 2 January 2007 p 48 and Newley Patrick Ian Bevan obituary The Stage 8 December 2006 Ganzl Kurt Kurt of Gerolstein BlogSpot com accessed 25 June 2020 John Gallas Carcanet Press accessed 29 April 2014 Rumens Carol Poem of the week Cat by John Gallas The Guardian 1 December 2014 a b Ten Poems translated by John Gallas and Kurt Ganzl PNReview 186 Vol 35 No 4 March April 2009 Zubair Sarah Jane Ecstatic and intoxicate review of Rhapsodies 1831 Petrus Borel The Times Literary Supplement 30 September 2022External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kurt Ganzl Photos of Ganzl as a young man Ganzl s activities after 1970 cartoon drawing of Ganzl Vocals by Ganzl 1988 Love Could I Only Tell Thee from The Geisha 1896 YouTube Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Kurt Ganzl amp oldid 1132009577, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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