The 12th and youngest child in a family of musicians, Robert Stolz had his first lessons with his parents, going on to study with Humperdinck, Robert Fuchs and Johann Hellmesberger. He held various provincial conducting positions in his native Austria, gradually embarking on a parallel career as a composer of operetta. As a conductor and composer in Berlin, he felt obliged to return, after the access to power of the National Socialists, to Vienna; then, after the Anschluss, he moved to Zurich, to Paris, and, in 1940, to the United States. He was able to resume an international career after the war, having established himself in America as a representative of Viennese lighter music.

Stage Works
Stolz wrote a large number of operettas, Singspiel and musicals, as well as music for films. A number of songs from the operettas have won individual popularity. Im weissen Rössl (‘The White Horse Inn’) was a 1930 collaboration with Ralph Benatzky.