Gustave Kerker


Gustave Adolph Kerker, sometimes given as Gustav or Gustavus Kerker, was a Kingdom of Prussia-born composer and conductor who spent most of his life in the United States. He became a musical director for Broadway theatre productions and wrote the music for a series of operettas and musicals produced on Broadway and in the West End. His most famous musical was The Belle of New York.

Life and career

Kerker was born in Herford, Kingdom of Prussia, and began to study the cello at the age of seven. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1867, settling in Louisville, Kentucky. Kerker played in pit orchestras at local theatres and then began to conduct. His early operetta, Cadets, toured the South in 1879. Kerker then moved to New York City, where he was engaged as the principal conductor at the Casino Theatre. There, he began to add his own songs into the scores of foreign operettas, notably Charles Lecocq's The Pearl of Pekin, since these works had no effective copyright in the U.S.
Image:The Belle of New York Vocal Score.jpg|right|thumb|Vocal score
Kerker's first complete operetta in New York was Castles in the Air in 1890. He wrote over 20 shows, the most successful of which were the London musical burlesque Little Christopher Columbus, and the international musical hit The Belle of New York. Other notable musicals included An American Beauty, The Girl from Up There, Winsome Winnie, The Tourists, The White Hen, and Fascinating Flora to a book by R. H. Burnside and Joseph W. Herbert. In 1909, he was asked to leave Germany by authorities for having failed to perform military service in his youth.
He was one of the nine founding members of ASCAP in 1914.
Kerker was married twice: first to Rose Keene whose stage name was Rose Leighton and second to Mattie B. Rivenberg, a show girl in the musical Nearly a Hero who was 30 years his junior.
Kerker died following an "attack of apoplexy" at his home on 565 West 169th Street in New York City at the age of 66.

Theater credits

  • 1879 - The Cadets
  • 1888 - Pearl of Pekin
  • 1890 - Castles in the Air
  • 1893 - Little Christopher Columbus, with Ivan Caryll, libretto by George Robert Sims and Cecil Raleigh
  • 1894 - Prince Kam or A Trip to Venus
  • 1895 - Kismet or Two Tangled Turks
  • 1896
  • *In Gay New York
  • *An American Beauty
  • 1897
  • *The Whirl of the Town
  • *The Belle of New York
  • 1898
  • *My Estelle
  • *Yankee Doodle Dandy
  • *The Telephone Girl
  • 1899 – The Man in the Moon
  • 1901 - The Girl from Up There
  • 1902 - The Billionaire
  • 1903
  • *"The Lobster Song " in The Wizard of Oz
  • *Winsome Winnie
  • 1904
  • *Burning to Sing, or Singing to Burn. A 'Very' Grand Opera
  • 1906
  • *The Social Whirl
  • *The Tourists
  • 1907
  • *The White Hen
  • *Fascinating Flora
  • 1909
  • *Die oberen Zehntausend
  • 1912 – Two Little Brides
  • 1921 – The Whirl of New York, based on The Belle of New York (libretto by Morton and Edgar Smith.