- Profession: Conductor, composer.
- Residences: Spalato (now Split) (1819-1819), Zara (now Zadar) (1819-1835), Vienna (1835-1895) and Gars am Kamp (1876-1895).
- Relation to Mahler:
- On 19-09-1882 Mahler conducted Franz von Suppè (1819-1895)’s ‘Boccaccio’ in Iglau.
- Gustav Mahler lived 1879-1879 House Gustav Mahler Vienna – Opernring No. 23. It is the house where Franz von Suppè lived from November 1887 on till his death and where Suppè’s widow lived on till 1926.
- In 1883 Mahler worked at the Vienna Karlstheater which had been Suppé’s place of work and his home for almost twenty years. Franz von Suppè (1819-1895) was a composer and conductor at the Vienna Karlstheater from 1863 until 1882. It was the place of Boccaccio’s world premiere in 1879.
- Correspondence with Mahler:
- Born: 18-04-1819 Spalato (now Split), Austro-Hungarian Empire, (now Croatia).
- Died: 21-05-1895 Vienna, Austria.
- Buried: Central cemetery, Vienna, Austria. Grave 32A-31.
Franz von Suppè or Francesco Suppè was an Austrian composer of light operas from the Kingdom of Dalmatia. A composer and conductor of the Romantic period, he is notable for his four dozen operettas.
Franz von Suppè’s parents named him Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo di Suppè when he was born on April 18, 1819, in Spalato, now Split, Dalmatia, Austrian Empire. His father – a man of Italian and Croatian ancestry – was a civil servant in the service of the Austrian Empire, as was his father before him; Suppè’s mother was Viennese by birth. He Germanized his name when in Vienna, and changed “di” to “von”. Outside Germanic circles, his name may appear on programs as Francesco Suppè-Demelli.
He spent his childhood in Zara, now Zadar, where he had his first music lessons and began to compose at an early age. As a boy he had no encouragement in music from his father, but was helped by a local bandmaster and by the Zara cathedral choirmaster. His Missa dalmatica dates from this early period. As a teenager, Suppè studied flute and harmony. His first extant composition is a Roman Catholic Mass, which premiered at a Franciscan church in Zara in 1835.
In Vienna, after studying with Ignaz von Seyfried, he was invited by Franz Pokorny the director of the Theater in der Josefstadt to work at his theaters (Josefstadt, Baden, Ödenburg (is Sopron), Pressburg (is Bratislava)), with the opportunity to present his own operas there.
Eventually, Suppè wrote music for over a hundred productions at the Theater in der Josefstadt as well as the Carltheater in Leopoldstadt, at the Theater an der Wien. He also put on some landmark opera productions, such as the 1846 production of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots with Jenny Lind.
More information about Franz von Suppè(1819-1895) on the website Stars in Gars.