Franz Allers

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Memorial plaque for Franz Allers in Bayreuth

Franz Allers (born August 6, 1905 in Karlsbad , Bohemia , † January 26, 1995 in Las Vegas , Nevada ) was an American conductor of Bohemian origin.

Life

The son of a lawyer studied from 1923 to 1926 at the State University of Music in Berlin . Allers became choirmaster at the Schubert Choir Berlin while still studying music . From 1926 to 1933 he was the first conductor at the then United City Theater Barmen-Elberfeld in Wuppertal . He had engagements in 1927 as an assistant at the Bayreuth Festival and in 1929 at the Wagner Festival in Paris.

In 1933 he was expelled because of his Jewish origins and went to the city theater in Aussig as Kapellmeister in Czechoslovakia . The Sudeten German Nazis expelled him there in 1938, and Allers fled to the United States. First he made his way as a piano teacher and accompanied the Ballets Russes de Montecarlo on tours. From 1946 he achieved a Broadway career and he conducted the world premieres of a number of musicals by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe , such as Brigadoon (1947) and Paint Your Wagon (1951). On March 15, 1956, he directed the premiere of My Fair Lady on Broadway and in 1961 also the premiere of the German version at the Theater des Westens Berlin.

After the collaboration between Lerner and Loewe ended in 1962, Allers returned to Germany in 1973, where he was chief conductor of the Gärtnerplatztheater until 1976 . He was living in Munich when he died at the age of 89 on a trip to California .

Allers received the Tony Award / Best Conductor and Music Director for My Fair Lady in 1957 and for the musical Camelot in 1961 .

literature

  • Hannes Heer ; Jürgen Kesting ; Peter Schmidt: Silent voices: the Bayreuth Festival and the “Jews” from 1876 to 1945; an exhibition . Bayreuth Festival Park and New Town Hall Exhibition Hall Bayreuth, July 22 to October 14, 2012. Berlin: Metropol, 2012 ISBN 978-3-86331-087-5 , p. 339, p. 385
  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Allers, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American conductor
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Carlsbad , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1995
Place of death Las Vegas , Nevada, United States