Edmund Schellhammer

A musician is offered a job in Vienna as stage director, but his disagreements with the aristocratic opera manager end in abrupt firing in spite of a mutual attraction. He's quickly engaged by another theatre and becomes famous for his lavish stage productions and fine acting, which begins their golden age with Suppé and Strauss.

Begun in Austria in 1944/45, finished and released in 1949, this is a biography of the minor Austrian composer Carl Michael Ziehrer, who overcomes hypersensitivity in competitive situations which leads initially to failures in both career and romance.