Sigmund Romberg

A Hungarian-born composer who arrived in New York and went to work for the Shubert brothers, Romberg adapted European operettas for Broadway before writing his own, and his mid-1920s run of The Student Prince, The Desert Song and The New Moon defined American operetta at its commercial peak. He composed songs for Al Jolson vehicles and later moved into film scoring as Broadway's appetite for operetta faded, adapting his Viennese training to whatever the American stage and screen wanted next.