Sigmund Mogulesko

Sigmund Mogulesko (December 16, 1858 – February 4, 1914) — Yiddish: מאָגולסקאָ, זעליג, 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."

Life

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 cantor 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.

The life of the party

When his voice changed, he worked two years knitting, 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 singers, 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.

Romania, New York, and elsewhere

With his partner Moishe Finkel, 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.

Death and reputation

Mogulesko died in New York in 1914, survived by his wife, one daughter, and his 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 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 pogroms of 1899.

References

* —, [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/freedman/lookupartist?hr=&what=6408 Entry in the Freedman Catalog] , listing recordings of some of his songs.
* —, "Yiddish Comedian Dead", "The New York Times", February 5, 1914, 9.
* —, "A Yiddish Actor's Funeral", "The New York Times", February 7, 1914, 10.
* Bercovici, Israil, "O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România" ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998). ISBN 973-98272-2-5