Richard Franz Joseph Heuberger was born in Graz on June 18, 1850, the son of a bandage factory owner. Like Josef Strauss, young Richard started a career as an engineer, but gave it up in 1876 in order to dedicate his life to music.
After studying at the Conservatory in Graz, Heuberger moved to Vienna. There he became director of the Academic Choral Society, the Vienna Singing Academy and the Vienna Men’s Choral society. From 1902, he also taught at the Vienna City Conservatory.
In 1881, Heuberger started to work as a music critic, first for the "Neue Wiener Tagblatt", and later for the "Allgemeine Zeitung" in Munich. In 1896, he became Eduard Hanslick’s successor at the influential "Neue Freie Presse" in Vienna and also worked as a freelancer and editor for the "Neue Musikalische Presse". His literary production consisted mostly of sketches, short stories, music-feuilletons, and music criticism, along with a biography of Franz Schubert. It was not until he was in his forties that Heuberger started to write operettas, of which only six were ever performed. His most famous operetta was, of course, the 1898 work "Opernball". This is still one of the most frequently-performed operettas worldwide.
Heuberger was also commissioned to write the score for "Die Lustige Witwe" but after three years he still had not come up with an innovative idea for the first act, and so the job was given to Franz Lehar instead! Richard Heuberger died in Vienna on October 28, 1914.
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