Kalman Juvelier

Kalman Juvelier (, 1863-1939) was an Austrian-born Yiddish theatre actor and manager, Broder singer, Tenor, and recording artist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who was active both in Europe and the United States. After emigrating to the United States in 1900, he became a key figure in the Yiddish theatre in New York, working with such notables as Boris Thomashefsky, David Kessler, Bertha Kalich and Jacob P. Adler and was director of the Hebrew Actor's Union as well as the Jewish Theatrical Alliance.

Biography Early life Juvelier was born in Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (today Lviv, Ukraine) on May 12, 1863. He was born into a poor family; his parents were Isaiah Juvelier and Yetta (née Berger). In 1880 he returned to Cernauti and joined Moses Horowitz's troupe. While working as an actor there he met his first wife, Yetta Rauch, who was the prima donna of the troupe. Kalman soon took over direction of the troupe and they spent the next two decades touring, performing operettas and plays by Avram Goldfaden, Jacob Gordin, Joseph Lateiner and others in Bukovina, Galicia, the Romania, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire.

In the 1890s his troupe continued to tour successfully and featured such actors as Bertha Kalich, Yekutiel "Edward" Margules, and Malbina Treitler, as well as a whole generation of younger Yiddish actors. Herman Wohl, who would later become a well-known composer of Yiddish music in the United States, also wrote for Juvelier's troupe during this time, as did the Hazzan and Yiddish songwriter Zeydl Helman. In some cases, Juvelier's troupe performed "bootleg" versions of Goldfaden plays, as in 1895 in Iași where he was able to find someone who had seen and memorized most of The Sacrifice of Isaac and could write it down for Juvelier. Goldfaden found out and attempted to sue Juvelier, but lost because the play was based on a Biblical story. He also managed to turn his fame on stage into a fairly extensive recording career, making him a contemporary of such early Yiddish recording artists as Solomon Smulewitz, Frank Seiden and Simon Paskal. His earliest may have been in 1904 when he made a number of recordings for the short-lived United Hebrew Disc and Cylinder Company, including some with Regina Prager. He became a Naturalized citizen in 1906. And by 1907 he was making recordings from Yiddish musicals and operettas by such composers as Goldfaden, Louis Friedsell, and Herman Wohl for Edison Records. By 1910 he had moved on to recording for Zonophone Records, and Columbia Records in 1912. During that time he returned to Columbia and Victor Records again several times, recording a long list of tracks for them during and after World War I.

From 1921 to 1928, he worked in the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and then returned to New York to work at the Second Avenue Theatre and others for a few short stints in the early 1930s.

Family Kalman's children were mostly born in Europe with his first wife Yetta Rauch. She died in New York in 1908.