Dr. Victor Urbancic, Austrian composer in Iceland. Photograph by Jón Kaldal.
Dr. Victor Urbancic or Viktor Ernest Johann von Urbantschitsch (9 August 1903 – 4 April 1958) was an Austriancomposer, conductor, teacher and music scholar from Vienna. He emigrated to Iceland in 1938. His wife, Melitta, came from a Jewish family. Urbancic stayed for the second half of his life in Iceland and had a big influence[1] on the music development in the country at the time.
Urbancic worked as teacher and director of the opera studio at the Conservatory of Graz before he came to Iceland in 1938. He also was lecturer of musicology of the University of Graz. In Iceland he was very important for the music-life. He became music director of the Icelandic National Theater in Reykjavík.[2] He conducted the first opera in Iceland which was Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi in 1951. He taught at the Reykjavík College of Music. He was organist and choir director of the Landakotskirkja in Reykjavík. Urbancic died on Good Friday in 1958 in Reykjavík.
He is the grandson of Viktor Urbantschitsch through his father, Dr. Ernst Urbantschitsch, and related to Christoph Waltz through the latter's mother Elisabeth Urbancic.
^Rudolf Habringer: Emigration an den Rand der Welt. Die Geschichte des Musikers Victor Urbancic, in: Zwischenwelt. Literatur, Widerstand, Exil, Jg. 20, H. 2, Wien: 2003, S. 33-41.
