Sigmund Mogulesko
Encyclopedia
Sigmund Mogulesko — Yiddish: זעליק מאָגולעסקאָ Zelik Mogulesko, first name also sometimes given as Zigmund, Siegmund, Zelig, or Selig, last name sometimes spelled Mogulescu — was a singer, actor, and composer in the Yiddish theater, originally from Kalarash, Bessarabia
(now Călăraşi
in Moldova
). He was a star in Abraham Goldfaden
's first Bucharest
-based theater troupe — the title role of Shmendrik
was written for him — and soon founded his own troupe; he eventually founded the Rumanian Opera House on New York City
's Lower East Side
, one of the great venues of Yiddish theater in New York. The Jewish Encyclopedia
described him in 1904 as "the best comedian on the Yiddish stage… He is known also as a leading composer of music for the Yiddish stage."
Iosif Heller, and learned to sight-read music in a mere four months. His mother died within a few more years, and he moved to Chişinău
, where he sang in the noted choir of cantor Nisen Belzer. As a preadolescent singer, he was paid 60 rubles
per year, at a time when the typical salary of a schoolteacher would have been about 18 rubles per year. He was soon hired away by Cantor Cuper (a.k.a. Kupfer) of Bucharest's Great Synagogue, engaged as a soloist. At 14 he began conservatory studies and was a prizewinning pupil.
In 1874, he performed with a visiting French
operetta
troupe, where he met Lazăr Zuckermann, Simhe Dinman, and Moses Wald; the four of them began performing together for weddings and other ceremonies as Corul Izraelit, "the Israelite Chorus". He continued singing for the synagogue, and even sang on Sundays in a church choir.
, then returned to sing for Cuper at the synagogue with as an 18-year-old choral director. He also sang at weddings and other parties in the style of the Broder singer
s, and imitated well-known Bucharest actors.
When Goldfaden arrived in Bucharest in the spring of 1877 with his less-than-year-old troupe, the first professional Yiddish theater company, Mogulesko auditioned for him with a scene that became the basis for Goldfaden's play Shmendrik, or the Comical Wedding
. The title role, written for Mogulesko, is a clueless mama's boy, often considered the first great role in Yiddish theater. Mogulesko is believed to have written or arranged some of the music for that play; he certainly went on to do so for many others.
In a piece on Goldfaden, Nahma Sandrow remarks, "Meshoyrerim were sophisticated musically, and were notorious for being freethinking and irreverent. As soon as Goldfadn[ Sandrow's spelling: there is no standardized transliteration of Yiddish into English] arrived in town he heard about a young cutup who was the life of local parties, imitating scenes from Rumanian comedies and mimicking the dignified cantor he sang for. Within a year Mogulesko had become the comic genius of his generation." [Sandrow, 2004, 10]
Mogulesko also played various other comic, musical roles for Goldfaden, including the granddaughter in Die Bubbe mitn Einikl (Grandmother and Granddaughter), and the lead in The Intrigue, or Dvoise Intrigued. In his first non-comic role, a play by August von Kotzebue
, he so upstaged the star, Israel Grodner
, that Grodner quit to start his own company; ironically, Grodner would soon hire Mogulesko away from Goldfaden; Mogulesko would eventually inherit Grodner's troupe, and Grodner would start another.
, over the next decade he would dominate Yiddish theater in Romania, with the Jigniţa theater, its orchestra, and Mogulesko himself lauded as comparable to the level of the National Theater, and Mogulesko performing at times in Romanian as well as Yiddish, drawing an audience that went well beyond the Jewish community. During this period, he gave David Kessler
his start in theater. (At one point during this period, he and Finkel had a falling out, and he spent a summer doing garden cabaret with a quartet he formed; Finkel's troupe was unsuccessful without him, and they soon reached an understanding.)
In 1886 or 1887, Mogulesko moved to New York, where he promptly became one of the first Yiddish theater stars in the New World
. He later founded the Rumanian Opera House on Manhattan's Lower East Side; the first performance there was Goldfaden's unsuccessful January 1888 New York debut.
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, he also performed in Russia
, "Austria" (which at that time could mean anywhere in Cisleithania
, and most likely means Galicia (Central Europe), probably Lvov, which had a thriving theater scene), and England
.
In New York, he introduced Jacob Adler
and Keni Lipzin to the American stage.
In June 1906, Mogulesko made a triumphant return tour to Romania, reviving Yiddish theater there after a decade of doldrums. He brought to Romania some of the hits of New York Yiddish theater, most of which had never played there: Shaykevich-Shomer's Di Emigrantn (The Emigrants), and Yekl Baltakse, Dos Groyse Glik (Big Luck) by Kornblatt, and Der Umbakanter (The Unknown) by Jacob Gordin. He took over the Jigniţa Theater, which at this time was renamed the Leiblich Theater.
Writing of Mogulesko's troupe in Romania in 1884, and probably referring to the plays of Moses Horowitz
and Joseph Lateiner
, Dr. Moses Gaster
, while finding the performances to be in certain ways "primitive", was generally impressed. "Above all, we must assert that Jewish theater, through the pieces played on its stage, has indeed an educative and moral scope, because on the one hand it represents scenes from our history known by only a tiny minority, refreshing, therefore, secular memory; on the other hand, it shows us our defects, which we have like all men, but not with a tendency to strike at our own immorality with a tendency towards ill will, but only with an ironic spirit that does not wound us, as we are wounded by representations on other stages, where the Jew plays a degrading role." [Bercovici, 1998, 79]
Ernest Joselovitz wrote a play about the Mogulesko troupe, Vilna's Got a Golem
, set in Vilna, Lithuania
, during the pogrom
s of 1899.
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
(now Călăraşi
Calarasi, Moldova
Călăraşi was founded 1848. Long ago, the word "călăraşi" meant "horsemen". The name of Călăraşi was inspired by a legend. In this legend, it is said that once when Ştefan cel Mare fought the Ottomans, he ordered a regiment of horsemen to stand guard...
in Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
). He was a star in Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays.Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre.In 1876 he founded in...
's first Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
-based theater troupe — the title role of Shmendrik
Shmendrik
Shmendrik, oder Die komishe Chaseneh is an 1877 comedy by Abraham Goldfaden, one of the earliest and most enduring pieces in Yiddish theater. The title role of Shmendrik was originally written for the young Sigmund Mogulesko, and derived from a character Mogulesko did when auditioning for...
was written for him — and soon founded his own troupe; he eventually founded the Rumanian Opera House on New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Lower East Side
Lower East Side, Manhattan
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
, one of the great venues of Yiddish theater in New York. The Jewish Encyclopedia
Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jewish Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia originally published in New York between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901...
described him in 1904 as "the best comedian on the Yiddish stage… He is known also as a leading composer of music for the Yiddish stage."
Childhood and youth
Mogulesko's father died when he was nine years old, and his family received assistance from the local Jewish community. He first became a meshoyrer (choir singer) in the choir of cantorHazzan
A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish cantor, a musician trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer.There are many rules relating to how a cantor should lead services, but the idea of a cantor as a paid professional does not exist in classical rabbinic sources...
Iosif Heller, and learned to sight-read music in a mere four months. His mother died within a few more years, and he moved to Chişinău
Chisinau
Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...
, where he sang in the noted choir of cantor Nisen Belzer. As a preadolescent singer, he was paid 60 rubles
Russian ruble
The ruble or rouble is the currency of the Russian Federation and the two partially recognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Formerly, the ruble was also the currency of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union prior to their breakups. Belarus and Transnistria also use currencies with...
per year, at a time when the typical salary of a schoolteacher would have been about 18 rubles per year. He was soon hired away by Cantor Cuper (a.k.a. Kupfer) of Bucharest's Great Synagogue, engaged as a soloist. At 14 he began conservatory studies and was a prizewinning pupil.
In 1874, he performed with a visiting French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
troupe, where he met Lazăr Zuckermann, Simhe Dinman, and Moses Wald; the four of them began performing together for weddings and other ceremonies as Corul Izraelit, "the Israelite Chorus". He continued singing for the synagogue, and even sang on Sundays in a church choir.
The life of the party
When his voice changed, he worked two years knittingKnitting
Knitting is a method by which thread or yarn may be turned into cloth or other fine crafts. Knitted fabric consists of consecutive rows of loops, called stitches. As each row progresses, a new loop is pulled through an existing loop. The active stitches are held on a needle until another loop can...
, then returned to sing for Cuper at the synagogue with as an 18-year-old choral director. He also sang at weddings and other parties in the style of the Broder singer
Broder singer
The Brodersänger or Broder singers, from Brody in Ukraine, were Jewish itinerant performers in Austrian Galicia, Romania, and Russia, professional or semiprofessional songwriters and performers, who from at least the early 19th century sang and danced, often in comic disguises, and who performed...
s, and imitated well-known Bucharest actors.
When Goldfaden arrived in Bucharest in the spring of 1877 with his less-than-year-old troupe, the first professional Yiddish theater company, Mogulesko auditioned for him with a scene that became the basis for Goldfaden's play Shmendrik, or the Comical Wedding
Shmendrik
Shmendrik, oder Die komishe Chaseneh is an 1877 comedy by Abraham Goldfaden, one of the earliest and most enduring pieces in Yiddish theater. The title role of Shmendrik was originally written for the young Sigmund Mogulesko, and derived from a character Mogulesko did when auditioning for...
. The title role, written for Mogulesko, is a clueless mama's boy, often considered the first great role in Yiddish theater. Mogulesko is believed to have written or arranged some of the music for that play; he certainly went on to do so for many others.
In a piece on Goldfaden, Nahma Sandrow remarks, "Meshoyrerim were sophisticated musically, and were notorious for being freethinking and irreverent. As soon as Goldfadn
Mogulesko also played various other comic, musical roles for Goldfaden, including the granddaughter in Die Bubbe mitn Einikl (Grandmother and Granddaughter), and the lead in The Intrigue, or Dvoise Intrigued. In his first non-comic role, a play by August von Kotzebue
August von Kotzebue
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue was a German dramatist.One of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival in 1817. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften...
, he so upstaged the star, Israel Grodner
Israel Grodner
Israel Grodner was one of the founding performers in Yiddish theater. A Lithuanian Jew who moved at the age of 16 to Berdichev, Ukraine, Russian Empire, the Broder singer and actor was in Iaşi, Romania in 1876 when Abraham Goldfaden recruited him as the first actor for what became the first...
, that Grodner quit to start his own company; ironically, Grodner would soon hire Mogulesko away from Goldfaden; Mogulesko would eventually inherit Grodner's troupe, and Grodner would start another.
Romania, New York, and elsewhere
With his partner Moishe FinkelMoishe Finkel
Moishe Finkel was a prominent figure in the early years of Yiddish theater. He was business partner first of Abraham Goldfaden and later of Sigmund Mogulesko and, for a time, was married to prima donna Annetta Schwartz...
, over the next decade he would dominate Yiddish theater in Romania, with the Jigniţa theater, its orchestra, and Mogulesko himself lauded as comparable to the level of the National Theater, and Mogulesko performing at times in Romanian as well as Yiddish, drawing an audience that went well beyond the Jewish community. During this period, he gave David Kessler
David Kessler (actor)
David Kessler was a prominent actor in the first great era of Yiddish theater. As a star Yiddish dramatic performer in New York City, he was the first leading man in Yiddish theater to dispense with incidental music....
his start in theater. (At one point during this period, he and Finkel had a falling out, and he spent a summer doing garden cabaret with a quartet he formed; Finkel's troupe was unsuccessful without him, and they soon reached an understanding.)
In 1886 or 1887, Mogulesko moved to New York, where he promptly became one of the first Yiddish theater stars in the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
. He later founded the Rumanian Opera House on Manhattan's Lower East Side; the first performance there was Goldfaden's unsuccessful January 1888 New York debut.
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, he also performed in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, "Austria" (which at that time could mean anywhere in Cisleithania
Cisleithania
Cisleithania was a name of the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy created in 1867 and dissolved in 1918. The name was used by politicians and bureaucrats, but it had no official status...
, and most likely means Galicia (Central Europe), probably Lvov, which had a thriving theater scene), and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
In New York, he introduced Jacob Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler , born Yankev P. Adler, was a Jewish actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa, and later in London and New York City....
and Keni Lipzin to the American stage.
In June 1906, Mogulesko made a triumphant return tour to Romania, reviving Yiddish theater there after a decade of doldrums. He brought to Romania some of the hits of New York Yiddish theater, most of which had never played there: Shaykevich-Shomer's Di Emigrantn (The Emigrants), and Yekl Baltakse, Dos Groyse Glik (Big Luck) by Kornblatt, and Der Umbakanter (The Unknown) by Jacob Gordin. He took over the Jigniţa Theater, which at this time was renamed the Leiblich Theater.
Death and reputation
Mogulesko died in New York in 1914, survived by his wife Amalie, two daughters, Bessie and Leeza, and son Julius. The New York Times remarked at the time of his funeral that "There has never been among English-speaking peoples... such an outpouring of sympathy over the death of an actor unknown outside of his profession..."Writing of Mogulesko's troupe in Romania in 1884, and probably referring to the plays of Moses Horowitz
Moses Horowitz
Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz , also known as Moishe Hurvitz, Moishe Isaac Halevy-Hurvitz, etc., was a playwright and actor in the early years of Yiddish theater...
and Joseph Lateiner
Joseph Lateiner
Joseph Lateiner was a playwright in the early years of Yiddish theater, first in Bucharest, Romania and later in New York City, where he was a co-founder in 1903 with Sophia Karp of the Grand Theater, New York's first purpose-built Yiddish language theater building.Lateiner got his start writing...
, Dr. Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster was a Romanian-born Jewish-British scholar, the Hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, London, and a Hebrew linguist. He was also the son-in-law of Michael Friedländer, principal of Jews' College. The surname Gaster is taken from Spanish Castro, indicating his Sephardic...
, while finding the performances to be in certain ways "primitive", was generally impressed. "Above all, we must assert that Jewish theater, through the pieces played on its stage, has indeed an educative and moral scope, because on the one hand it represents scenes from our history known by only a tiny minority, refreshing, therefore, secular memory; on the other hand, it shows us our defects, which we have like all men, but not with a tendency to strike at our own immorality with a tendency towards ill will, but only with an ironic spirit that does not wound us, as we are wounded by representations on other stages, where the Jew plays a degrading role." [Bercovici, 1998, 79]
Ernest Joselovitz wrote a play about the Mogulesko troupe, Vilna's Got a Golem
Golem
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing....
, set in Vilna, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, during the pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s of 1899.