As the Croatian lands were exposed to often aggressive Austrian, Hungarian, and Italian politics until WWI and in some regions even later, so Croatian music criticism was written in the Croatian, ...German and Italian languages. To the best of our knowledge, the history of Croatian music criticism began in 1826 in the literary and entertainment journal Luna, and was written by an anonymous author in the German language.A forum for Croatian language music criticism was opened in Novine Horvatzke, i.e. in its literary supplement Danica horvatska, slavonska i dalmatinska in 1835, which officially started to promote the Croatian National Revival, setting in motion the process of constituting the Croatian nation in the modern sense of the word. However, those articles cannot be considered musical criticism, at least not in the modern sense of the word, as they never went beyond the level of mere journalistic reports. The first music criticism in the Croatian language in the true sense of the word is generally considered a very comprehensive text by a poet Stanko Vraz (1810-51) about a performance of the first Croatian national opera Ljubav i zloba (Love and malice) by Vatroslav Lisinski (1819-54) from 1846. In terms of its criteria for judgement, that criticism proved to become a model for the majority of 19th-century and later Croatian music criticism. Two judgement criteria are clearly expressed within it: national and artistic.Regardless of whether we are dealing with 1) ideological-utilitarian criticism, which was directed towards promoting the national ideology (Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, 1834-1911; Antun Dobronić, 1878-1955), 2) impressionist criticism based on the critic’s subjective approach to particular work (Antun Gustav Matoš, 1873-1914; Milutin Cihlar Nehajev, 1880-1931; Nikola Polić, 1890-1960), or 3) Marxist criticism (Pavao Markovac, 1903-41), we may observe the above mentioned two basic criteria. Only at the end of the period under consideration the composer Milo Cipra (1906-85) focused his interest on immanent artistic values, shunning any ideological utilitarianism, and insisting on the highest artistic criteria.
Franz Steger, čije je ime Dimitrija Demeter pohrvatio u Franjo Stazić (na njemačkom der Steg znači staza), rođen je 3. prosinca 1824. u Szentendreu. S 20 godina došao je u Zagreb Vatroslavu ...Lisinskom. I praizvedba opere Ljubav i zloba 28. ožujka 1846. označila je početak velike karijere umjetnika koji nije potekao iz Hrvatske, ni podrijetlom ni rodom, ali jest oblikovanjem svoje umjetničke ličnosti prvog profesionalnog hrvatskog opernog pjevača.
Stazić je počeo profesionalnu karijeru u Pešti, nastavio u Pragu, a od 1853. bio je član Dvorske opere u Beču i njezin veliki prvak, i to je ostao do 1871., s većim ili manjim prekidima, kao stalni član ili gost. Svojim krasnim glasom sjaja i snage herojskog tenora s briljantnim visinama, sigurnom pjevačkom tehnikom i sugestivnom interpretacijom, s lakoćom je svladavao vrlo širok i raznolik repertoar. Intonacija mu je bila čista, dikcija uzorna, pjevačka inteligencija razvijena. U Zagrebu je 1858. pjevao u Ernaniju, Trubaduru i Luciji di Lammermoor. Gostovao je u mnogim velikim europskim kazalištima, prvi je hrvatski pjevač koji je nastupio u Scali. Godine 1874. povukao se sa scene. Umro je u Szentendreu 1. ožujka 1911. godine.
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