Albert Szirmai

Who was Albert Szirmai?

Albert Szirmai was a Hungarian operetta composer. Szirmai was a graduate of the Budapest Academy of Music, studying piano and composition. Szirmai received a doctorate in music from the University of Budapest, and was devoted to creating works for the stage. He wrote music for 12 one-act plays and over 300 songs for the Budapest theater Népszínház-Vígopera, at which he was musical director. When his first operetta, The Yellow Domino, met with success, he decided to continue in the genre; it is due to the works of Szirmai, Emmerich Kálmán, and Victor Jacobi, among others, that the Hungarian operetta gained recognition internationally at the beginning of the 20th century.

Szirmai was born in Budapest. On September 3, 1923 he arrived in New York aboard the SS Leviathan and took a post as music director for Chappell Music. He was music editor for such Broadway luminaries as Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin. Szirmai made headlines in 1965, when he discovered 100 unpublished songs Porter had written, 1924-1955, in Porter's nine room apartment in the Waldorf Towers shortly after Porter's death.