William Wallace Furst was an American composer of musical theatre pieces and a music director, best remembered for supplying incidental music to theatrical productions on Broadway.
Biography
Furst was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied music in Baltimore, and was a church organist at the age of 14.
Career
Furst's comic opera Electric Light was produced and conducted by him in 1878, and for the five seasons following he received engagements as conductor of opera. By the 1880s, he was composing theatrical music for productions starring Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Maude Adams, Otis Skinner, William Faversham, Viola Allen and Mrs. Leslie Carter. He composed the music for five Shakespeare productions by Margaret Anglin at the Berkeley Stadium in California, as well as her production of Electra. One of his earliest operettas was My Geraldine. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Furst was the orchestra director at the Tivoli Theatre in San Francisco, California. He composed his only opera, Theodora, for the Tivoli. In 1892, he composed the successful operetta The Isle of Champagne. In 1893, he published "The Girl I Left Behind Me" and moved to New York City, becoming the music director at the now-demolished Empire Theater. The same year, he composed the music for the musical Miss Nicotine with Lillian Russell and Marie Dressler Another such Empire piece was The Little Trooper, starring Della Fox followed by The Little Minister. In 1898, he composed another such piece for the Empire, A Normandy Wedding, which received an enthusiastic reception in New York at the Herald Square Theatre. By 1900, Furst also had fairly steady work as a composer/arranger of incidental music to accompany theatrical productions. He produced music for, or was music director for numerous plays, including a steady stream of dramas produced by David Belasco and Charles Frohman. Two plays by Belasco which had Furst's musical accompaniments, Madame Butterfly and The Girl of the Golden West, were made into operas by Giacomo Puccini who attended their New York productions. Musicologist Allan W. Atlas has shown that Puccini modeled some music heard in his opera La fanciulla del West on Furst's music. His last theatrical composition was music for Joan the Woman, starring Geraldine Farrar.
Death
Furst died in 1917 at his home in FreeportLong Island, New York at the age of 66. An enthusiastic gardener, Furst tripped in his garden, injuring his foot, which led to a brain clot. He was survived by his widow Charlotte and his daughter, Mrs. Lillian Martin.
Furst served as conductor/music director of many of the works that he composed. In addition, he is known to have conducted the following musicals and operettas:
Much of the music composed by William Furst remains unpublished. Since he wrote "for hire," many of his works remained with David Belasco. They now form a part of the in the of . His work for and have been cataloged separately.
