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(*1775, date of death unknown, sometime after 1823)
József Ruzitska wrote theatre music as a military conductor in Debrecen and joined the theatre company of Nagyvárad (Oradea) in 1821. A year later he was with the theatre in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár), where he wrote his two operas, Béla's Flight and Kemény Simon, which remained in the repertoire afterwards. As a forerunner to Ferenc Erkel, he was the creator of Hungarian historical opera. His melodies combined the verbunkos style with contemporary German and Italian operatic elements. In 1823, he left Hungary and later lived in Italy, but no details are known about his later life.