Background

Franz von Suppé's parents named him Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere di Suppé-Demelli when he was born on 18 April 1819 in Spalato, now Split, Dalmatia, Austrian Empire.

Education

As a teenager in Cremona, Suppé studied flute and harmony. At the age of 15 he composed works of church music, and in 1835, after he moved with his widowed mother to Vienna, became the pupil of the Austrian conductor Ignaz Seyfried, himself a pupil of Mozart.

Career

In 1840 Suppe was appointed conductor at the Josefstadter Theater in Vienna. For the next 20 years he wrote music for 180 farces and vaudevilles all forgotten apart from the inspiration-crammed Poet and Peasant Overture and a song from the play The Mandrake, "Oh du mein Oesterreich, " Austria's second national anthem. With the advent of the vogue of Jacques Offenbach, Suppe wrote one-act operettas, among them Ten Maids and No Man (1862), Beautiful Galatea (1865), and Light Cavalry (1866). When in 1876 Johann Strauss refused a book, Suppe grasped his chance; the result was Fatinitza, whose success was surpassed only by his next work, Boccaccio (1879). None of the remaining seven operettas could measure up to these two masterpieces. Suppé'sSuppe's talent, though not overpowering, was a friendly one, facetious and versatile. He died in Vienna on May 21, 1895.

Achievements

• Suppé composed about 30 operettas and 180 farces, ballets, and other stage works. The descriptive nature of Suppé's overtures has earned them frequent use in numerous animated cartoons.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Poet and Peasant and Other Great Overtures in Full Score

    (A prolific writer of theatrical music whose works ranged ...)

  • Suppe: Overtures & Marches

    (Ouvertures de Leichte Kavallerie, Pique Dame, Die schöne ...)

  • Suppe: Overtures; Gustav Kuhn
  • The Poet And The Peasant Overture
  • Franz von Suppé: Cavalerie légère, Ouverture