O.C. MUSIC / CHRIS PASLES : Return of ‘Gypsy Princess’ : Popular European Operetta, Silenced by War, Comes to Center

Asked to name their favorite operettas, most Americans are likely to come up with Franz Lehar’s “The Merry Widow,” Johann Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus” or maybe some of the works by Gilbert and Sullivan.

But a European might add titles by Emmerich Kalman--”Die Csardasfurstin”) (The Gypsy Princess), “Grafin Mariza” (Countess Maritza) or “Die Zirkusprinzessin” (The Circus Princess).

Who? What?

“They all had their day in America,” sighed the composer’s daughter, Yvonne Kalman, during a recent interview at her home in Malibu. “I do feel that the fact that they never made the screen made a difference in this country.”

Southern California audiences will get a chance to judge for themselves starting Friday, when Opera Pacific opens a seven-performance run of “The Gypsy Princess” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Actually, several of Kalman’s works had been planned for film versions in the 1930s. MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer bought the movie rights, but “unfortunately, (World War II) broke out, and all those topics with Hungarian and European themes were just impossible to do, so they just remained on the shelf,” Yvonne Kalman said. “It was a tragedy for my father.”

Born in Hungary in 1882, Kalman began studying serious music at the Budapest Academy of Music when he was still in high school. (Fellow students included Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly). For a while, he also had plans to become a concert artist, but developed painful neuritis and had to abandon any thoughts of a performance career.

He won composition prizes for his works, but even so had trouble finding a publisher. But some of his humorous cabaret songs attracted attention, and he was asked to write an operetta (“Tatarjaras”), which met with success.

A later effort, “Ein Herbstmanover”, composed in 1909, met even greater response, not only in Europe, but in England and even the United States, where it ran as “The Gay Hussars” before World War I.

The die had been cast.

“He really wanted to be a serious composer,” Kalman said. “But he just had those tunes coming in the way.”

In all, Kalman wrote more than 15 operettas, although only a few--particularly “Gypsy Princess,” with its romantic plot of a prince in love with a cabaret star--have remained in the repertory of European opera companies.

Kalman wrote most of these works while living in Vienna, but as the son of Jewish parents, he recognized the peril in the rise of the Nazis. So he and his family moved to Switzerland and later to Paris.

So popular were his works in Germany, however, that Hitler sent an agent to Paris to tell him that “the Fuhrer loved my father’s music and would make him an honorary Aryan if he would come back,” his daughter said. “Obviously, we never did that.”

When the Germans invaded Paris, Kalman emigrated with his family to the United States. He become an American citizen in 1942, only after the Hungarian government allied itself with the Nazis. (Recent reference books restore Kalman’s first name to Imre, the Hungarian original, but he preferred the Germanicized Emmerich, according to his daughter.)

Life was not easier for Kalman and other European immigrants, as it turned out, especially in Southern California, where Kalman relocated in response to MGM’s offer.

“For that generation, it was very difficult coming to the United States because it was a very cold place at the time,” Yvonne Kalman said. “Europeans were very lonely. . . . They were so far away from an urban society and all of the things that they knew. . . .

“After a year and a half of living here and terrible disappointment, he went to New York City,” his daughter said. “He lived there, very quietly and very modestly, and our home was the center for all these Europeans who were in the same boat.”

It was while living there that Yvonne Kalman (born in 1938) began to realize exactly what her father actually did. “He was conducting the NBC Radio of the Air,” she recalled, “and my brother, who is older, said, ‘Do you hear this music?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you like it?’ ‘I love it.’ And he said, ‘It’s by our dad!’ And he was conducting, and I didn’t know what conducting meant. But I just know it touched my heart and it has ever since.”

She was not tempted to take up music, however. “I got piano lessons as a little girl,” she recalled, “and every time I started to practice, everyone in my family would laugh. And thank God, I was able to get out of that pretty fast.”

But her brother, Charles Kalman, did become a composer, although his father was opposed to the idea.

“My father felt that at the point there was a transition in music, and he was afraid that Charlie would not be able perhaps to catch the wave and that it would bring him sadness and rejection,” she said. “He did have a difficult time, especially living in Germany, with people comparing him to our father. . . . But now he’s found his niche, and he’s very happy with it.”

Charles Kalman lives in Germany. Yvonne also maintains a residence in Munich. Their mother, Vera Makinska Kalman, lives in Monte Carlo and is expected to attend the Opera Pacific opening Friday. A third child, Lily, died young.

Kalman was an ailing man when he decided to return to Europe in 1949, settling in Paris where he died in 1953 less than a week after his 71st birthday. He lived long enough to see a wave of revivals of his works, however.

“Many wonderful things happened during those years,” his daughter recalls. “The only thing that was hard, during the war, all his family had been wiped out (in Nazi concentration camps), and he never recuperated from that.”

A tireless advocate for her father’s music, Yvonne Kalman persuaded the Vienna Volksoper to bring “Gypsy Princess” to New York along with “Merry Widow” and “Fledermaus,” during a 1984 tour, where it proved a great success. She also persuaded the Australian Opera to mount a production of the work in 1990--the same production that Opera Pacific is bringing to Orange County.

“My feelings for the music are very strong,” she said. “When the baton is raised and the music starts, there is something special about it, and it never has failed to win an audience.”

* Opera Pacific presents Emmerich Kalman’s “The Gypsy Princess” Friday, Feb. 27, 28 and March 4 and 7 at 8 p.m.; and March 7 and 8 at 2 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, in Costa Mesa. Tickets: $20 to $75. Information: (714) 740-2000 (TicketMaster).