(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Cabaret and opera singer Robert Osborne will perform the cabaret and film songs of Franz Waxman, who wrote hits for the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Billie Holliday and Joan Crawford, at Hudson Opera House on Saturday, May 17, 2014 at 7pm.

From the beginning of his career in the cabarets and film studios of Weimar-era Germany to his turbulent passage through Paris and final exile in Hollywood, Franz Waxman (1906-1967) wrote sassy and infectious popular songs. Over the course of his prolific career, Waxman composed 144 film scores garnering twelve Academy Award nominations and two awards.

Although Waxman’s music prominently features in such iconic films as The Philadelphia Story, Bride of Frankenstein, and Sunset Boulevard as well as the composer’s celebrated Carmen Fantasie for the film Humoresque, many of his songs were never published.

Robert Osborne has been granted exclusive access to Waxman’s manuscripts and has crafted an entertaining survey of his life in exile through to his greatest songs in German, French and English.

Hailed by The New York Times as “a singer who goes all the way,” bass-baritone Robert Osborne has been performing cabaret for many years, focusing on composers of the so-called Great American Songbook and the masters of popular song from France, Germany and Italy. In cabaret, he has appeared at the Café Sabarsky, the Bard Graduate Center and Symphony Space in New York and in venues throughout France. Osborne recently sang the Objective Voice in Harry Partch’s two-character hobo opera, The Wayward, at Carnegie Hall.  Next month, he will reprise the role of François Mignon in Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter, directed by Robert Wilson, at the Nuits de Fourvière Festival in Lyon, France.

Osborne has sung over fifty roles in operas from Bernstein to Weill with companies in Paris, Berlin, New York, Houston, Santa Fe and Los Angeles.  His concert career has taken him to Royal Albert Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Victoria Hall in Singapore, the Gran Teatro in Havana, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, and Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow where he has sung under such distinguished conductors as Bernstein, Ozawa, Spivakov, Tilson Thomas, John Williams and Russell Davies. He has appeared with the Tanglewood, Schleswig-Holstein, Nakamichi, USArts/Berlin, Aspen and Marlboro Festivals as well as on several celebrated telecasts for the BBC, PBS, Russian and European television. He has appeared in four City Center Encores! musicals, in the Bernstein at 70! Gala from Tanglewood, and in the BAM Salutes Sondheim Gala.  Osborne is on the faculties of Vassar College and Barnard College/Columbia University.

Franz Waxman was among Hollywood’s most talented composers of musical scores, best known for his suspenseful scores of many Hitchcock films. He was born Franz Wachsmann in 1906 in what is now Chrozow, Poland, and began playing piano as a child. At age 17, he enrolled in the Dresden Music Academy and later in the Berlin Music Conservatory, working nights playing piano in nightclubs and cafes. After a brief stint in the UFA, Waxman began scoring German films, but was forced to flee in 1934, moving briefly to Paris before emigrating to the U.S. He came to Hollywood where he began scoring films.  Waxman founded the Los Angeles Music Festival in 1947 and won his first Oscar for the music of Sunset Boulevard in 1950.

Tickets are $20/ $18 for members.

The Hudson Opera House offers a year-round schedule of arts and cultural programming in the former Hudson City Hall, which houses New York State’s oldest surviving theatre. Ongoing programs include concerts, readings, lectures, exhibitions, theatre and dance presentations, after-school programs, workshops, classes and community arts events like the annual Winter Walk on Warren Street.