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Ivan Zajc

The childhood and youth of Ivan (Giovanni) pl. Zajc (Rijeka, August 3, 1832 – Zagreb, December 16, 1914) unfolded in an atmosphere of music, in Zajc’s birthplace, Rijeka, where his father Ivan (1800 – 1854) had arrived from Bohemia in 1830, via Bratislava and Vienna, as bandmaster of the 45th Infantry Regiment of Baron Mayer.

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The childhood and youth of Ivan (Giovanni) pl. Zajc (Rijeka, August 3, 1832 – Zagreb, December 16, 1914) unfolded in an atmosphere of music, in Zajc’s birthplace, Rijeka, where his father Ivan (1800 – 1854) had arrived from Bohemia in 1830, via Bratislava and Vienna, as bandmaster of the 45th Infantry Regiment of Baron Mayer. Ivan Zajc, or Johann von (pl. in Croatian) Zayitz, soon abandoned military service and became involved in the musical life of Rijeka, in several areas: as violinist and conductor of the theatre orchestra, organist in the cathedral, teacher, and composer of concertante, tutorial and orchestral works. He early recognised the musical gifts of his son and his outstanding aptitude for music, and enabled him to acquire a fundamental musical education. The boy performed in public as a violinist, regularly attended rehearsals and performances of the opera, and at the age of 12 had already composed his first work – the Overture in E major for piano. Still, his father wanted him to become a lawyer, and it was only after a lot of persuasion that he would accede to the boy’s preference for music. After high school days were over, he allowed him to study composition at the Milan Conservatory. By that time, young Ivan had already composed a score of works, mainly for piano and violin, among them some based on popular themes from the operas of Verdi and Rossini.
In 1850, after an arduous journey by coach and train, the 18-year old lad arrived in Milan. After sitting his entry exam, and passing outstandingly well, Zajc (his surname was recorded in the Conservatory records in four different spellings!) enrolled in the Conservatory, which was at that time being reorganised. He lodged in a private house where Verdi himself had once lived, and he studied together with Amilcare Ponchielli and Arrigo Boito, later very prominent musicians. According to the registers of the Conservatory, he attended courses in composition, counterpoint and harmony, the major subjects, then taught by Stefano Ronchetti Monteviti, Alberto Mazzuccato, Giovanni Battista Croff and Carlo Boniforti, and as well as that the history and philosophy of music, strings and piano, general history and declamation, French and religion. The teachers thought him diligent and talented, but systematically warned of a tendency to rashness that needed curbing. Each year he took part in the student performances, as performer or composer. The fourth and final time was in May 1855, when in the little theatre of the Conservatory, his opera La Tirolese was given before an invited audience. Pupils of the Conservatory took part in the performance, and Zajc was first violin and conductor. Reviewers thought the work inventive and mature in its skills, through which a naturally talented composer was speaking, with a clear instinct for the theatre, promising much, although he sometimes took over Verdi’s approaches (particularly the cadenzas). The fact is that Zajc manifested a closeness with the traditional features and taste of Italian opera, which would mark many of his later works. Zajc concluded his study of composition with very good marks, although he did not get a diploma, and in the middle of 1855 returned to Rijeka, where he was awaited by the post of conductor in the municipal theatre orchestra.
The Rijeka period is marked by vigorous activity in the theatre and in the field of composition. By 1862 he had composed some 70 solo, chamber, orchestral, music theatre and religious works, often for special purposes, instructional, sometimes extant in several versions. With these compositions, he was obviously filling up a series of voids, which opened up the doors of both the City orchestra and teaching jobs to the young composer. He met the requirement for original works, although they were often based on Italian operatic templates, but this was after all able to fit well into the Rijeka repertoire, marked predominantly as it was by Italian musical culture. In this period, Zajc put his own opera on the stage, Amelia, ossia il bandito, after Schiller’s The Robbers. Rijeka had a building specifically constructed for the opera (known as Adamić’s Theatre, 1805), but did not have its own permanent company: Therefore, the town had regular guest appearances by Italian troupes, performing the relatively recent operatic repertoire. Zajc’s opera Amelia following the Verdian tradition, fit excellently into theatrical events in Rijeka, as performed by the Buratti company.

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Still, the need for expanded musical horizons and a search for new challenges spurred his departure for Vienna in 1862, his wife and children going with him. There Franz von Suppé, originally from Split, was already at work, and made Zajc’s first steps easier in the new milieu with advices and concrete offers. He worked as a teacher in the opera studio of the Polyhymnia Society, where for a short time the singer Amelia Materna was his pupil (she sang in his operetta Der Meisterschuss von Pottenstein). Giovanni von Zaytz – as he introduced himself in Vienna – brought with him the scores of some of his major compositions, including his graduation work (La Tirolese) and the Rijeka opera Amelia, which, with his Viennese operettas and arrangements of others’ works, are kept in the libraries in that city. The beginning of his public composing work was marked by the first performance of his operetta Crew on Board (Mannschafft an Bord) – at the end of 1863 in the Carl-Theater, a popular Viennese suburban theatre, with which he was to be connected the following years as both conductor and composer, until he moved to the Theater an der Wien in 1869. It was the composition of operettas, probably the most popular Viennese genre of the time, that coloured his work in the city. For Suppé, considered to have created the true Viennese operetta, Zajc arranged the overture Zehn Mädchen und kein Mann (performed in 1863) and tried to follow the model of success in his 13 blithe music theatre pieces composed in the period (most of them one act operettas), among which are the romantic comic opera in three acts Die Hexe von Boissy (1866) and the parody comic opera in three acts Raub der Sabinerinnen (1869). Most of them were first performed in Vienna, but some of them were soon afterwards also put on in Prague, and even in Berlin. Zajc had a lot of competition in Vienna. Apart from Suppé, also at work were Carl Michael Ziehrer, Carl Millöcker and the 1860s saw the sudden burst of popularity of the operettas of Johann Strauss the Younger. Although the printed arrangements of some numbers of Zajc’s operettas, or compositions on themes of his by Ziehrer and Eduard Strauss tell of their popularity, criticism was fickle, for which the poor libretti of then fashionable writers like Erich Nessel and Betty Young were partially to blame. On the other side, the connection with Croats at work in Vienna turned his attention to the national question in music (which, for example, resulted in the composition and performance of the choral composition U boj! / To Battle! in 1866 to words by Franjo Marković). Apart from that, the connection with leading representatives of Croatian intellectual and political circles who visited the city, enabled the performance of his operettas in the newly founded Croatian National Theatre, which from 1863 on had a small ensemble for the performance of light music theatre pieces. Zagreb was in want of a powerful composing presence, someone with good education, with experience in the theatre and in teaching, so that the offer to take over the place of director of the school of the Music Institute and to found and run the Zagreb Opera was extremely tempting.
In January 1870 Ivan Zajc moved to Zagreb and took on both duties. As director of the Opera, he organised an ensemble (of instrumentalists and vocalists), proposed the repertoire to the parliamentary theatre board (it was composed of the standard international repertory), and his task was also to compose music theatre works with a national colour. The new operatic department was ceremonially opened on October 2, 1870, with his opera Mislav, the first part of his national historical trilogy. After it came Ban Leget (1872) and Nikola Šubić Zrinjski (1876). After that, Zajc wished to try his hand out at the broader Slavic context, and composed operas to Russian and Polish originals (Lizinka, Pan Twardovski, Ladies and Hussars) and – probably influenced by Smetana’s popular The Bartered Bride, which he put on stage in 1873 – had considerable success with a bright and cheerful Croatian folk opera, Zlatka (1885). Two of his new operettas (Aphrodite and King’s Whim) were produced towards the end of his work in the Opera, when in 1889 the opera department was closed. Zajc left his job in the theatre and devoted himself entirely to teaching and composing, and occasionally returned to composition for the music stage. His large oeuvre covers numerous instructional and concertante works, symphonic, chamber and vocal-instrumental music. However, only two more of his operas (Armida, Primorka) were put on in the Zagreb theatre in his last creative phase.
Ivan Zajc experienced both much success and a lot of criticism in Zagreb. He laid the foundation of the standard operatic repertory, to an extent made the orchestra professional (although it was still largely composed of military bandsmen) and bequeathed us a highly respectable total of 1000 compositions. He died in Zagreb on December 16, 1914. His efforts to build up a Zagreb opera company were continued by Nikola Faller and director Stjepan Miletić, who supervised the move to the new building in 1895.

Vjera Katalinić (c) Croatian Music Information Centre

Citation: Katalinić, Vjera, „Ivan Zajc“. Introduction to the sheet music: Ivan Zajc. Nikola Šubić Zrinjski. Musical Tragedy in 3 Acts (8 Settings), Croatian Music Information Centre, Zagreb 2012,V-VI.

Selected authors

Blagoje Bersa

Dora Pejačević

Franjo Krežma

Ivana Lang

Tomaso Cecchini

Boris Papandopulo

Fran Lhotka

Ferdo Livadić

Josip Mandić

Vatroslav Lisinski

Božidar Kunc