Kurt-Friedrich Gänzl (born 15 February 1946) is a New Zealand writer, historian and former casting director and singer best known for his books about musical theatre. After a decade-long playwriting, acting and singing career, and a second career as a casting director of West End shows, Gänzl became one of the world's most important chroniclers of musical theatre history. According to Christophe Mirambeau of Canal Académie, "Kurt Gänzl is an institution. No one interested in musicals and operetta can ignore that. He is the world reference – with some few others, like Gerald Bordman, Ken Bloom, or Andrew Lamb – for that subject." He has written more than a dozen books on musical theatre topics, as well as blogs and articles about musicals, light opera and people, especially of the Victorian era, involved with the musical stage. He has also translated French poetry. Early life and career Gänzl was born Brian Roy Gallas in Wellington, New Zealand, and is of Austrian descent, the son of Frederick, né Fritz Eduard Gänzl, an educator who moved to New Zealand before World War II and became Headmaster of Wellington Technical College and who adopted the name Fred Gallas, and his wife Nancy, née Agnes Ada Welsh. He studied law and classics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, receiving a master's degree in 1967 while performing as a radio and concert vocalist. Early in his career, Gänzl wrote plays. His one-act plays Elektra and The Women of Troy were produced in New Zealand in 1966 and 1967 by Elmwood Players. The latter play won the British Drama League (Drama magazine) award in 1967. The next year, Gänzl joined the New Zealand Opera Company as a bass soloist. After the company closed in 1968, he moved to London and studied for a year at the London Opera Centre. For several more years, he worked as a performer, including a 1969 season in the hit London show, The Black and White Minstrels, and afterwards in Monte Carlo and on cruise ships. His last show was the 1974 production of Tommy Steele's adaptation of Hans Andersen at the London Palladium. Throughout the 1980s, together with his domestic partner, the theatrical agent Ian Bevan, he worked as a talent agent and as a casting director for Harold Fielding on over a dozen musicals and plays in London's West End theatres and for musical and operatic productions