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![Josef Forster; photograph by Joseph Albert [de] (1880s) Josef Forster (1838-1917) (c) Joseph Albert (1825-1886).jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Josef_Forster_%281838%E2%80%931917%29_%C2%A9_Joseph_Albert_%281825%E2%80%931886%29.jpg/200px-Josef_Forster_%281838%E2%80%931917%29_%C2%A9_Joseph_Albert_%281825%E2%80%931886%29.jpg)
Josef Forster (20 January 1838, Trofaiach - 23 March 1917, Vienna) was an Austrian composer; known primarily for his operas and operettas.
He was one of ten children born to Jakob Forster, an organist, and his wife Klara, the daughter of a choirmaster. After beginning his musical training at home, he became a choir boy at Admont Abbey, where he received further instruction from their organist, Franz Traunbauer (1775-1864). In 1854, he enrolled in the teacher training institute in Graz; followed by technical studies at the Joanneum (now the Graz University of Technology). It was during this time that he made his first attempts at composition; now lost. In 1865, he went to Vienna to study architecture, but soon gave up. To support himself, he worked as a private teacher. Forster also devised inventions which were not successful. He was, however, awarded several patents for optical devices, guns and engines.
With the support of Eduard Hanslick and Felix Otto Dessoff, he made his debut as a composer with two string quartets and a Symphony in c minor, performed in 1871 by the Vienna Philharmonic with Dessoff conducting. During the 1870s and 1880s, he premiered numerous operettas and ballets; notably The Assassins, inspired by a poem by Archduke Johann Salvator, who responded by giving Forster the Tuscan Knight's Cross for civil merit. Despite this, an application to be the Kapellmeister at the Burgtheater was not accepted.
His only major success was the one-act opera, The Rose of Pontevedra (1893), for which he received a first prize from the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. It is considered to be one of the few qualities verismo style operas in German and was performed regularly until 1914. His later works never became as popular. Der dot Mon (1902), based on a Fastnachtsspiel (burlesque) by Hans Sachs, failed, even though it received good reviews and was premiered at the Vienna State Opera with its Director, Gustav Mahler, conducting.
In his later years, he developed an interest in mathematics and mistakenly believed that he had solved Fermat's Last Theorem. This resulted in a continuing argument with the committee in charge of awarding the Wolfskehl-Preis ; worth 100,000 Goldmarks to anyone who could prove they had found a solution. His efforts were, predictably, futile. He died forgotten and poverty-stricken in 1917. Of his works, only a brief excerpt from Der dot Mon was ever recorded (in 1902, by the soprano, Margarete Michalek).
Franz Schmidt, also Ferenc Schmidt was an Austro-Hungarian composer, cellist and pianist.
Johann Baptist Strauss II, also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger or the Son, was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well as a violinist. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century. Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include "The Blue Danube", "Kaiser-Walzer", "Tales from the Vienna Woods", "Frühlingsstimmen", and the "Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka". Among his operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron are the best known.
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Felix Otto Dessoff was a German conductor and composer.
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Trofaiach is a municipality in the Leoben district of the state of Styria in Austria, the site of a post World War II British sector displaced persons camp.
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Guido Mancusi is an Austrian-Italian conductor and composer.
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