Franz Von Suppè Spent His Childhood and Youth in Zadar

Did you know that the most important operetta composer in history and one of the greats of world music, the Viennese composer Franz von Suppè, spent his childhood and youth in Zadar? And not only that: Suppè is known as the author of Missa Dalmatica, which he composed at the Zadar Monastery of St Francis, and he left behind a truly fascinating music legacy: hundreds of stage and concert works, operettas, songs, marches, waltzes and polkas. His famous Leichte Kavallerie (Light Cavalry) is standardly performed at New Year's Concerts in Austria; Suppè's music was also used in Disney cartoons (Mickey Mouse), and even one song by the cult rock musician Frank Zappa was musically inspired by Light Cavalry.

On the occasion of the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Franz von Suppè, a memorial plaque was set up on the west wall of the Monastery of St Francis in Zadar in October 2020, so Zadar paid tribute to its composer in full right, recalling his life in the city, the inevitable Missa Dalmatica composed in Zadar. Von Suppè was born in 1819 in Split, but as a five-month-old baby he moved with his parents to Zadar, where he spent the first 16 years of his life. It is known that Suppè sang in the church choir of the Zadar Cathedral of St Anastasia at the age of eight. He wrote his first mass in Zadar as a thirteen-year-old boy, which he later rewrote and published in Vienna in 1877 under the title Missa Dalmatica. The opera Das Matrosen Heimkehr (The Sailors’ Return), with its story located on the island of Hvar, as well as the Overture to Dalmatian Folklore Themes in F Minor, are both permeated with Dalmatia.

After the early death of his father, he and his mother moved to her native Vienna, where he polished his musical talent, and in the second half of the 19^th century he gained fame as an Austrian and Viennese author and leading composer of Viennese operetta. Franz von Suppè died in Vienna on 21^st May 1895, and was buried in a place of honour in Vienna's central cemetery.