Herbert Kretzmer - Lyricist

Lyricist

Kretzmer wrote lyrics for the BBC's satire That Was The Week That Was, including the racial satire "Song of Nostalgia For an American State" and the much-recorded tribute to John F. Kennedy, "In the Summer of His Years", written and performed by Millicent Martin within hours of his assassination.

Kretzmer won an Ivor Novello Award for the Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren comedy hit “Goodness Gracious Me”, composed by David Lee. Other award-winning Kretzmer lyrics include “Yesterday When I Was Young” and the chart-topping “She”, both written with and for the French singer Charles Aznavour..

Kretzmer wrote the lyrics for Anthony Newley’s cult musical film Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness, whose score included “When You Gotta Go”, often used as a closing song by singers including Barbra Streisand.

Kretzmer wrote the book and lyrics of the West End musical, Our Man Crichton, composed by David Lee and based on J M Barrie’s satirical play The Admirable Crichton. The musical starred Kenneth More and Millicent Martin. Kretzmer later wrote (with composer Laurie Johnson) the lyrics for a large-scale comedy spoof, The Four Musketeers, which ran for more than a year at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, starring Harry Secombe as the swordsman d'Artagnan.

In 1985, Kretzmer’s songs for Aznavour came to the attention of producer Cameron Mackintosh, who invited him to write an English version of a French musical Les Misérables (by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg). Kretzmer’s lyrics extended the two-hour Paris original into a three-hour show. The all-sung “Les Mis” opened at the Barbican Theatre on 8 October 1985 and is still running in the West End, the longest running West End musical in history. The score includes such well-covered ballads as "I Dreamed a Dream", "Bring Him Home", "On My Own" and "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables". For his work on the Les Misérables lyrics, Kretzmer received Tony and Grammy awards.

In 2008 Kretzmer wrote the lyrics for Marguerite from an original text by Alain Boublil, a musical set in Nazi-occupied Paris, to music by Michel Legrand. The show was part of a Jonathan Kent Season at the Haymarket Theatre before moving on to a season in Japan. Marguerite was shortlisted in the Best Musical category in the Evening Standard Drama Awards 2008.

Kretzmer’s most recent musical project is Kristina, based on Vilhelm Moberg’s epic suite of novels about Swedish emigrants to Minnesota in the 19th century. The show, originally conceived and written by lyricist Björn Ulvaeus and composer Benny Andersson from ABBA. It was presented and recorded in a concert version over two nights at Carnegie Hall, New York in September 2009.