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Tango in London: George Metaxa - Oh, Donna Clara, 1929

George Metaxa with Orchestra – Oh, Donna Clara! Tango (Petersburski –Kennedy), HMV 1929 (UK) NOTE: George Metaxa was a Romanian singer, who in the 1920s worked in Bucharest as private secretary to the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture. Yet, with his operatic high-baritone, faraway gaze and handsome face he was easily persuaded by his friends to try a stage career. So he came to England in 1926 and when he was 25 he recorded an attractive Romanian folk song "Mandrullita". It was a pleasant song and a significant sales success, so after Anglicising his Christian name, George went on to have success in revue and from 1927 onwards he recorded for HMV versions of the dance-hits of the day. Metaxa’s first big chance on the London Westend stage came in 1929 with his engagement by C.B.Cochran for the revue "Wake Up and Dream”. The show had a prestigious cast with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and Metaxa recorded several songs from it in 1929 with Carroll Gibbons’ Orchestra. After a long run the show was transferred to New York, but George stayed in London having being signed by Cochran for another venture: Noel Coward’s "Bitter Sweet" at His Majesty’s in July 1929. After enormous success of the play, Metaxa however decided to give up Europe and try his luck in New York. Announced by advertising as “exotic middle-European nobleman” – an image which was in no demand anymore in the crisis-shook America – Metaxa appeared in “Bitter Sweet” in New York, but was soon replaced by George Nodin. He then made several appearances in films for Paramount and RKO, but he was unlucky in being cast in the wrong roles, so the proposals for taking up new roles expired. In 1932 he recorded two songs from the show "The Cat and The Fiddle" with Leonard Joy and his orchestra. Completely forgotten in Europe and unknown in the US, George Metaxa – one of the best – yet, least lucky European crooners - died in Monro, Louisiana in 1950, aged just 51. Tango “Oh Donna Clara” – original Polish title “Tango Milonga” – is one of the most popular Polish songs ever written. Composed by the renowned composer and bandleader Jerzy Petersburski (member on the multi-generational Warsaw klezmer family Melodyst) it was presented on stage of the revue-theatre Morskie Oko in Warsaw, in May 1929, in the show “Warszawa w kwiatach” (Warsaw In the Flowers). It was sung by Stanisława Nowicka – called the “Polish queen of tango” – who was accompanied in her Argentinian dance by actors, Eugeniusz Bodo, Witold Roland and Ludwik Sempoliński guised as three gauchos. The number was so well-done, that the Viennese editor of sheet music bought from Jerzy Petersburski (for 3000 shillings: enormous sum in those times) the rights to the song with a changed title: “Oh Donna Clara” . It’s how begun the international career of this song.