Kurt Herbert Adler
Kurt Herbert Adler (April 2, 1905 – February 9, 1988)[1] was an Austrian-born American conductor and opera house director.
Biography
Adler was born in
Gaetano Merola, then General Director of the San Francisco Opera, heard of him and, over the telephone, invited him to the San Francisco Opera in 1943 as chorus director.
In the following ten years, he took on more and more administrative details as Merola's health and energy diminished. While Adler was not the Board's natural choice to replace Merola at the time of his death in 1953, after three months of acting as artistic director and with the help of its president, Robert Watt Miller, Adler was confirmed as General Director.
Adler's aims in taking over the company were several. One was to expand the season and, by the 1969 season, eleven operas were given five or six performances each on average while the season ran to late November. He was tireless in seeking out up-and-coming new singers, whether American or European, by attending performances in both major and minor opera houses. Thirdly, his interest in developing stronger connections to opera stage directors in an attempt to strengthen the dramatic and theatrical elements of the works, led to a long relationship with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle.
Other innovations included the
He was not always regarded as an easy person to work for, but his principal achievements in San Francisco were to greatly raise the standards of the opera company and "to attract a stunning galaxy of European stars, some at the beginning of their careers, to a small city at the other end of the world, often at significantly lower salaries than New York or Chicago would offer".[2]
He retired in late December 1981 and continued to conduct and be involved with music until his death in Ross, California in 1988.
The
His son Ronald H. Adler is an opera director and has been artistic director at the Bavarian State Opera (2001–08) and the Berlin State Opera (2008–11).
References
Notes
- ISBN 0-674-37299-9.
- ^ Gereben, ??
- ^ Adler Fellows, San Francisco Opera.
Sources
- Gereben, Janos (2006). "Kurt Herbert Adler: Biography". mrichter.com. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007. Retrieved August 11, 2007.
- Moy, Patricia Kristof (2005). "Remembering Kurt Herbert Adler". San Francisco Classical Voice. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved August 11, 2007.
External links
- Kurt Herbert Adler at AllMusic
- San Francisco Opera official website
- Online guide to the Kurt Herbert Adler Papers, The Bancroft Library
- Several Episodes (in full) of KQED and KQED-FM's "Opera in the Park"
- Interview with Kurt Herbert Adler by Bruce Duffie, October 11, 1986
- Kurt Herbert Adler (in German) from the online-archive of the Österreichische Mediathek