Kurt-Friedrich Gänzl (born 15 February 1946) is a New Zealand writer, historian and former

casting director In the performing arts industry such as theatre, film, or television, casting, or a casting call, is a pre-production process for selecting a certain type of actor, dancer, singer, or extra to land the role of a character in a script, screenp ...

and singer best known for his books about

musical theatre Musical theatre is a form of theatre, theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, ...

. After a decade-long playwriting, acting and singing career, and a second career as a casting director of West End shows, Gänzl became one of the world's most important chroniclers of musical theatre history."Kurt Gänzl"
Theatre Heritage Australia, 2 September 2020 According to Christophe Mirambeau of Canal Académie, "Kurt Gänzl is an institution. No one interested in musicals and operetta can ignore that. He is the world reference – with some few others, like

Gerald Bordman Gerald Martin Bordman (September 18, 1931 – May 9, 2011) was an American theatre historian, best known for authoring the reference volume ''The American Musical Theatre'', first published in 1978. Simonson, Robert (12 May 2011)Gerald Bordman, ...

, Ken Bloom, or Andrew Lamb – for that subject."Mirambeau, Christophe
"Kurt Gänzl and Emily Soldene (1840–1912)"
Canal Académie, 17 June 2007, accessed 8 May 2018 He has written more than a dozen books on musical theatre topics, as well as blogs and articles about musicals, light opera and people, especially of the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...

, involved with the musical stage. He has also translated French poetry.

Early life and career

Gänzl was born Brian Roy GallasKurt Ganzl
at Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002 (subscription required). Accessed 22 March 2009 in

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

, New Zealand, and is of Austrian descent, the son of Frederick, né Fritz Eduard Gänzl, an educator who moved to New Zealand before World War II and became Headmaster of Wellington Technical College and who adopted the name Fred Gallas, and his wife Nancy, née Agnes Ada Welsh. He studied law and classics at the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury (UC; ; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was founded in 1873 as Canterbur ...

in New Zealand, receiving a master's degree in 1967 while performing as a radio and concert vocalist. Early in his career, Gänzl wrote plays. His one-act plays ''Elektra'' and ''The Women of Troy'' were produced in New Zealand in 1966 and 1967 by Elmwood Players. The latter play won the

British Drama League The All-England Theatre Festival ("AETF") organises the only countrywide eliminating One-Act Play Festival, contest for one-act plays in performance throughout England. It provides an opportunity for Amateurs to compete against like-minded group ...

(''Drama'' magazine) award in 1967. The next year, Gänzl joined the New Zealand Opera Company as a

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

soloist. After the company closed in 1968, he moved to London and studied for a year at the London Opera Centre. For several more years, he worked as a performer, including a 1969 season in the hit London show, ''

The Black and White Minstrels ''The Black and White Minstrel Show'' is a British light entertainment show on BBC prime-time television that ran from 1958 to 1978. The weekly variety show presented traditional American Minstrel show, minstrel and country songs, as well as sh ...

'', and afterwards in

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo ( ; ; or colloquially ; , ; ) is an official administrative area of Monaco, specifically the Ward (country subdivision), ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is located. Informally, the name also refers to ...

and on cruise ships. His last show was the 1974 production of

Tommy Steele Sir Thomas Hicks (born 17 December 1936), known professionally as Tommy Steele, is an English entertainer, regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star. After being discovered at the 2i's Coffee Bar in Soho, London, Steele recor ...

's adaptation of ''Hans Andersen'' at the

London Palladium The London Palladium () is a Grade II* West End theatre located on Argyll Street, London, in Soho. The theatre was designed by Frank Matcham and opened in 1910. The auditorium holds 2,286 people. Hundreds of stars have played there, many wit ...

. Throughout the 1980s, together with his

domestic partner A domestic partnership is an intimate relationship between people, usually couples, who cohabitation, live together and share a common domestic life but who are not marriage, married (to each other or to anyone else). People in domestic partner ...

, the theatrical agent Ian Bevan, he worked as a talent agent and as a casting director for Harold Fielding on over a dozen musicals and plays in London's

West End theatre West End theatre is mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in and near the West End of London.Christopher Innes"West End"in ''The Cambridge Guide to Theatre'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 1194–1195, ...

s and for musical and operatic productions in Europe, Australia and America.Gänzl, Kurt
"A Magical Musical"
''Kurt of Gerolstein'', 28 February 2014, accessed 16 July 2020

Writing and later years

While still working as a casting director, Gänzl began writing theatre reference works. In 1986 he published his two-volume history, ''The British Musical Theatre'' (1986), which won the Roger Machell Prize for the year's best performing-arts book and the British Library Association's McColvin Medal for the outstanding reference work (any subject) of its season. This was followed by ''Gänzl's Book of the Musical Theatre'' (1988 with Andrew Lamb) and ''The Blackwell Guide to the Musical Theater on Record'' (1989). At the end of the 1980s, Gänzl moved to St. Paul de Vence in the south of France with Bevan to concentrate on writing full-time. In the 1990s, he published ''The Complete 'Aspects of Love (1990), five editions of ''Musicals'' (1995; US: ''Song and Dance: The Complete Story of Stage Musicals''), and ''The Musical: A Concise History'' (1997).

''The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre''

Gänzl's seminal reference work, ''The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre'', was published in 1994 and greatly expanded in a second edition in 2001. It was a

Dartmouth Medal The Dartmouth Medal of the American Library Association is awarded annually to a reference work of outstanding quality and significance, published during the previous calendar year. The Medal was designed by Rudolph Ruzicka. History Dartmouth Co ...

honoree in 1995 and was awarded "Outstanding Reference Source" in 1997 by the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world. History 19th century ...

. Theatre historian John Kenrick wrote: "Only serious research libraries carry this set listing thousands of shows and individuals. This expanded update of the 1995 original edition is the best source to date on European musicals, with solid coverage of Broadway too." Another critic calls it "the most exhaustive study anyone has yet made of musicals, and it is difficult to imagine it being done in a better or more thorough way." ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' wrote, "So, with ''The Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre'', Kurt Gänzl ... has transcended all rivals. His work embraces not only Broadway and Shaftesbury Avenue, but Vienna and Budapest, Paris and Rome, Sydney and Toronto. He even apologises for including only three New Zealand entries. If there is a musical production of any kind that he does not know about, then it is odds-on that nobody else does either." Gänzl has said, "My goals are to make the musical theater a respectable academic subject and to put the musical theater into its international context. I want to bring the so-called 'musical' and '

operetta Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs and including dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, and length of the work. Apart from its shorter length, the oper ...

' back together as part of the same art form and to dispel some of the early myths and quasi-historical errors and distortions that have become accepted as part of musical theater history."

Later years

In the early 2000s, Gänzl and Bevan moved to a home in Sefton, New Zealand, where Gänzl completed biographies of

Victorian burlesque Victorian burlesque, sometimes known as travesty or extravaganza, is a genre of theatrical entertainment that was popular in Victorian England and in the New York theatre of the mid-19th century. It is a form of parody in which a well-known oper ...

queen

Lydia Thompson Lydia Thompson (born Eliza Thompson; 19 February 1838 – 17 November 1908), was an English dancer, comedian, actor and theatrical producer. From 1852, as a teenager, she danced and performed in pantomimes, in the UK and then in Europe and so ...

, Broadway author William Gill and Victorian singing star Emily Soldene, and in 2017 a compendium of 100 biographies titled ''Victorian Vocalists''.Gänzl, Kurt
"Elena is a racehorse"
''Kurt of Gerolstein'', 13 December 2008, accessed 8 May 2018 After Bevan's death in 2006, Gänzl spent time as a musical critic in Berlin, Germany, and then lived in Yamba, Australia.Gänzl, Kurt
"The Ages of an Author"
''Kurt of Gerolstein'', 2 October 2020; ''The Times'', 2 January 2007, p. 48; and Newley, Patrick
Ian Bevan obituary
''The Stage'', 8 December 2006 Gänzl has published more than a dozen books on musical theatre and contributed many biographical entries to the '' Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies'' and ''

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and th ...

''. He has also published biographies elsewhere, such as for Theatre Heritage Australia. Since 2007 he has contributed more than a thousand entries about Victorian and Edwardian singers, actors and musical theatre works, on his blog ''Kurt of Gerolstein''. Over the years he has also worked with his younger brother, the poet John Gallas, on translations of works by Baudelaire, Verhaeren,"Ten Poems (translated by John Gallas and Kurt Ganzl)"
PNReview 186, Vol. 35, No 4, March – April 2009 Materlinck, Yourcenar, Anna de Noailles, Nerval, Florian and others, including Borel's ''Rhapsodies'' (2022).Zubair, Sarah-Jane. "Ecstatic and intoxicate", review of ''Rhapsodies 1831: Petrus Borel'', ''The Times Literary Supplement'', 30 September 2022 Gänzl has an avid interest in the sport of

harness racing Harness racing is a form of horse racing in which the horses race at a specific gait (a trot or a pace). They usually pull a two-wheeled cart called a sulky, spider, or chariot occupied by a driver. In Europe, and less frequently in Australia ...

and has owned and bred racehorses.

Books

* 1986: ''The British Musical Theatre'' (2 vols.; Macmillan Press) * 1988: ''Gänzl's Book of the Musical Theatre'' (with Andrew Lamb; Bodley Head/Schirmer) * 1989: ''The Blackwell Guide to the Musical Theatre on Record''. Blackwell * 1990: ''The Complete "Aspects of Love"'' (Aurum Press) * 1994: ''The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre'' (Blackwell/Schirmer; 2 vols, expanded in 2001 to 3 vols.) * 1995: ''Musicals: the Illustrated Story'' (Carlton) ** 1995 (US edition of same): ''Song and Dance: The Complete Story of Stage Musicals'' (Smithmark Publishers) * 1995: ''Gänzl's Book of the Broadway Musical'' (Schirmer; Macmillan) * 1997: ''The Musical: A Concise History'' (Boston: Northeastern University Press * 2002: ''

: Queen of Burlesque'' (NY & London: Routledge) * 2002: '' William B. Gill: From the Gold Fields to Broadway'' (Routledge) * 2007: '' Emily Soldene: In Search of a Singer'' (Steele Roberts) * 2017: ''Victorian Vocalists'' (Taylor and Francis) * 2021: ''Gilbert and Sullivan: The Players and the Plays'' (State University of New York Press) * 2022: ''Rhapsodies 1831: Petrus Borel'' translated with John Gallas (Carcanet Classics) * 2022: ''The Musical: A Concise History'' (2022 version) with Jamie Findlay (State University of New York Press)

References

External links

Photos of Gänzl as a young man

Vocals by Gänzl (1988): "Love Could I Only Tell Thee"
(from '' The Geisha'', 1896) –

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ganzl, Kurt 1946 births 20th-century New Zealand dramatists and playwrights 20th-century New Zealand historians 20th-century New Zealand male singers 21st-century New Zealand historians Casting directors Gay dramatists and playwrights Gay singers LGBTQ historians Living people New Zealand expatriates in England New Zealand gay musicians New Zealand gay writers New Zealand LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights New Zealand LGBTQ singers New Zealand male dramatists and playwrights New Zealand non-fiction writers New Zealand people of Austrian descent Translators of Charles Baudelaire Translators of Gérard de Nerval University of Canterbury alumni University of Canterbury Faculty of Law alumni