Kurt Adler

Kurt Adler (born March 1, 1907, Neuhaus, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic]—died September 21, 1977, Butler, New Jersey, U.S.) was an Austrian American chorus master and opera conductor who was known for his three-decade-long tenure (1943–73) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. In addition to conducting more than 20 different operas and preparing the Met’s chorus for 30 years, Adler edited many volumes of music and published the authoritative book The Art of Accompanying and Coaching (1965, corrected edition issued 1971, reprinted 1980).

Adler began studying music at age six in Neuhaus and gave his first performance as a pianist at age 14. He continued his studies in music and trained to be a conductor in Vienna in the 1920s with several Austrian instructors, including musicologist Guido Adler, composer Karl Weigl, and conductor Erich Kleiber. Adler was first an assistant conductor in Berlin, and then he found positions in Prague and Kiev.

In October 1938 Adler, a Jew, fled Nazi persecution. Adler’s parents, however, along with the rest of the Jewish community in his hometown in Austria, were deported by the Gestapo in 1942. His parents were sent to Belzec, an extermination camp in eastern Poland. When Adler arrived in the United States in 1938, he settled in New York City and proceeded to tour the continent as a pianist. The next year Adler became the music director of Friendship House, a new immigrants’ community centre.

In 1943 Adler became the assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944, five days before his March 26 debut on the Met stage, for which he conducted music from Act II of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé. He was appointed chorus master in 1945 and then, in 1951, debuted as the Met’s lead conductor. Fluent in several languages, he trained the chorus in both Germanic and Romance languages, tasks which often required two chorus masters. His last appearance took place not in the opera house but in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, on July 9, 1972, as part of a free Public Parks series. For that event, Adler led the orchestra and cast in a performance of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca.