Arnold Perlmutter

Jewish-American composer (born 1859 in Zolochiv, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Ukraine] - died 1953). Perlmutter grew up in Lemberg (Lviv), where he sang in a well-known synagogue choir and later performed as a klezmer, playing bass and violin. He became the director of the Harmonia orchestra, for which he composed several pieces. in 1889, his orchestra was engaged by I. B. Gimpel's Yiddish theater in Lemberg, where Perlmutter wrote the music for two operettas, "Rabbi Akiva and his Students" and "Der Spanisher Tsigayner" (The Spanish Gypsy). In 1891, when the father of Yiddish theater, Abraham Goldfaden, came to Lemberg, Perlmutter orchestrated and wrote new pieces for Goldfaden's plays. Later, Perlmutter toured with the Treytler and Juvelir troupes throughout Galicia, Romania (1893-1895) and Russia (1899). In 1900, Perlmutter came to the United States with a troupe led by Yiddish playwright and impresario Moishe Hurvitz. He settled in New York where he and his long-time collaborator Herman Wohl wrote the music for dozens of Yiddish operettas by Hurwitz and by other Yiddish playwrights, such as "Di almoneh" (The widow) and "A mentsh zol men zayn" (One should be a righteous person) by Anshel Schorr, "Dos Pintele Yid" and "Di sheyne Amerikanerin" by Boris Thomashevsky, and for their own English-language play, "The Shepherd King" (1909). Perlmutter retired from the stage in 1930.