Arnold Perlmutter

Who is Arnold Perlmutter?

Arnold Perlmutter composer for Yiddish theatre, born in Zlotshev, Galitsia, moved to Lemburg where he received both a religious and a secular education in Polish, Ukrainian, and German. Sang with then-famous hazzan Borekh Shor's chorus until his voice changed, then became a klezmer, playing bass and then violin and directing and composing for the Harmonia orchestra, which in 1889 was taken into I. B. Gimpel's Yiddish theater in Lemburg; he wrote the music for the operetta Rabbi Akiva and his students. and Der Spanisher Tsigayner.

In 1891 Abraham Goldfaden came to Lemburg to stage his Meshiakh tsaytn and Dos tsente gebot; Perlmutter orchestrated and reworked Goldfaden's collected musical numbers and composed new ones for his productions. He then toured with the Treytler and Yuvelir troups throughout Galitsia, Romania and Russia. From Chernovitz, Bukovina, in 1900 Professor Moyshe Horvitz took the whole troop to America.

Perlmutter met his longtime collaborator Herman Wohl in New York's Windsor Theater and they wrote for dozens of Hurwitz's operettas as well as Di Almoneh and A mentsh zol men zayn by Anshel Shor.