Ralph Benatzky

Ralph Benatzky (5 June 1884 – 16 October 1957) was a Czech-Austrian composer. He composed operas and operettas, such as Casanova (1928), Die drei Musketiere (1929), The White Horse Inn (1930) and Meine Schwester und ich (1930). Life He was born Rudolf Josef František (Rudolph Josef Franz) Benatzky on 5 June 1884 in Moravské Budějovice, Moravia, Austria-Hungary. He was born to a Czech mother and ethnically German father, who taught at a German school. From 1899, he studied at a real school in Litoměřice, but was soon expelled. He continued his studies in Vienna. He graduated from German studies at the University of Vienna and received a doctorate in music at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. He was a pupil of Antonín Dvořák. His first job after his studies was as a conductor and kapellmeister in Munich, and in the following years he worked in several small cabarets, for which he wrote songs, lyrics and smaller operettas. In 1914, he became the director of the Rideamus cabaret in Vienna. In 1913, his first full-length operetta Der lachende Dreibund premiered in Berlin, but it was not until the operetta Liebe im Schnee, which premiered in Vienna in 1916, that he achie