Paul Lincke
Paul Lincke was born in Berlin, Germany, on November 7, 1866. After completing his music study he played the violin and bassoon in numerous theater orchestras. He later distinguished himself as a theater conductor. In 1897 he had his first operetta produced in Berlin. Thereafter he wrote many operettas, all originally given in Berlin; he became one of the foremost exponents of the light musical theater in Germany of his time. The most famous were Frau Luna (1899), Fraeulein Loreley (1900), Lysistrata (1902), Prinzessin Rosine (1905), and Casanova (1914). His last operetta was Ein Liebestraum, produced in Hamburg in 1940. From 1918 to 1920 he was conductor at the Folies-Bergère in Paris. He died in Klausthal-Zellernfeld, Germany, on September 3, 1946.
His most famous composition is a song from Lysistrata (1902): “The Glow Worm” (“Gluehwuermchen”), which achieved phenomenal popularity throughout the world independent of the operetta. It is still famous both as a vocal composition and in orchestral transcriptions. A new vocal version, with amusing lyrics by Johnny Mercer, was published and popularized in the United States in 1952.