Mirko Jelačin
19 November 1892 Ljubljana – 1957
This recording is quite fascinating... the record in question is Derby 5576, the reverse is Ach so fromm – and both sides are, on
my copy of that record, sung by John Gläser, although the labels say "Mirko
Jelačin". But of course, Gläser's voice is so characteristic that there cannot be any doubt; the important German discographer
Rainer E. Lotz arrived at the same conclusion, and filed the record under Gläser.
It's mysterious enough why even a small and unimportant company like Derby should publish a record under the name of a competitor of the singer
who really recorded it (Gläser and Jelačin were active at precisely the same time, 1920s and 1930s; the record is from 1929). But
the mystery deepens: on Youtube, I found both sides of the record uploaded by a collector totally unaware of the whole Jelačin/Gläser
confusion – and Ach so fromm is the same Gläser recording as on my copy, but the Zar und Zimmermann aria is the version above:
definitely not Gläser, so obviously really Jelačin!! Actually, Lotz lists two takes of the Leb wohl mein flandrisch'
Mädchen side; my copy (the Gläser version) is 222-2 Lb, so 222 Lb must be the Jelačin version (the singer's German accent
sounds quite Slovenian, too). Weird, to say the least!
In RA format
Mirko (officially Vladimir) Jelačin was born into an wealthy family. His older brother Ivan took over the
business from their father, a colonial goods merchant, and expanded it considerably: he produced cork, vinegar, spirits; he
founded a very important printing house, he was CEO of a bank, head of the Slovenian Chamber of Commerce, and in the Board of
Directors of the Yugoslavian National Bank. (In 1943, the Nazis interned him in the Dachau concentration camp, and after the
war, Tito's communists nationalized all his companies.)
It's a fair bet that Mirko didn't know any money worries. He studied voice in Prague (where also his brother had studied
commerce), and began his career there – I don't know at which of Prague's numerous opera and operetta theaters, but it
was not the National Theater. Later, he was a member of the Lübeck theater, and sang also in his native Ljubljana.
He helped writing the (unsuccessful) text of a 1935 Slovenian operetta, Majda by Marjan Kozina; the music was well
received, but the libretto was torn to pieces by the critics, and the work disappeared after just ten performances in Maribor.
Reference 1; reference 2; reference 3: Ana Kramer, Marjan Kozina – ein slowenischer Komponist,
Kunstuniversität Graz 2016, p. 63–65; reference 4; reference 5 (the two latter on Ivan Jelačin)
|