Victor Herbert, Music: History, Composers, And Performers, Biographies

Related Category: Music: History, Composers, And Performers, Biographies

Victor Herbert 1859–1924, Irish-American cellist, composer, and conductor, studied at the Stuttgart Conservatory. In 1886 the Metropolitan Opera Company engaged his wife, Therese Herbert-FOster, as a singer and Herbert as first cellist, and together they immigrated to the United States. From 1898 to 1904 he was conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, but after 1904 he was chiefly engaged in composition. Two of Herbert's serious operas, Natoma (1911) and Madeleine (1914), were produced, but he achieved his major success with his melodious operettas, some of which are Babes in Toyland (1903), The Red Mill (1906), Naughty Marietta (1910), Sweethearts (1913), and Eileen (1917). He also wrote music for some of the Ziegfeld Follies, and composed some orchestral music and a cello concerto.

See biography by E. N. Waters (1955).