Early life Romberg was born in Hungary as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family, Adam and Clara Rosenberg, in Gross-Kanizsa (Hungarian:
Nagykanizsa) during the
Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich (
Imperial and Royal) monarchy period. In 1889 Romberg and his family moved to
Belišće, which was then in Hungary, where he attended a primary school. Influenced by his father, Romberg learned to play the violin at six, and piano at eight years of age. He enrolled at
Osijek gymnasium in 1897, where he was a member of the high school orchestra. After a brief stint working in a pencil factory in New York, he was employed as a pianist in cafés and restaurants. He also wrote the music for
Love Birds (1921). Romberg's adaptation of melodies by
Franz Schubert for
Blossom Time (1921, produced in the UK as
Lilac Time) was a great success. He subsequently wrote his best-known operettas,
The Student Prince (1924),
The Desert Song (1926) and
The New Moon (1928), which are in a style similar to the Viennese operettas of
Franz Lehár. He also wrote
Princess Flavia (1925), an operetta based on
The Prisoner of Zenda. His other works,
My Maryland (1927), a successful romance;
Rosalie (1928), together with
George Gershwin; and
May Wine (1935), with lyrics by
Oscar Hammerstein II, about a blackmail plot; and
Up in Central Park (1945), are closer to the American
musical in style. In 1948, he wrote a new score for "
My Romance" after the show had folded in try-outs. Romberg also wrote a number of
film scores and adapted his own work for film.
Columbia Records asked Romberg to conduct orchestral arrangements of his music (which he had played in concerts) for a series of recordings from 1945 to 1950 that were issued both on 78-rpm and 33-1/3 rpm discs. These performances are now prized by record collectors.
Naxos Records digitally remastered the recordings and issued them in the U.K. (They cannot be released in the U.S. because
Sony Music Entertainment, which is a parent company of Columbia Records, holds the copyright for their American release.) Much of Romberg's music, including extensive excerpts from his operettas, was released on LP during the 1950s and 1960s, especially by Columbia, Capitol, and RCA Victor.
Nelson Eddy and
Jeanette MacDonald, who appeared in an MGM adaptation of
The New Moon in 1940, regularly recorded and performed his music. There have also been periodic revivals of the operettas.
Personal life Romberg married twice. Little is known about his first wife, Eugenia, who appears on a 1920 federal census form as being Austrian. His second wife was Lillian Harris, whom he married on March 28, 1925, in
Paterson, New Jersey. They had no children. Harris was born March 8, 1898, and died April 15, 1967, in New York City. Romberg died in 1951, aged 64, of a
stroke at his
Ritz Towers Hotel suite in New York City and was interred in the
Ferncliff Cemetery in
Hartsdale, New York. == Selected songs ==