Maurice Abravanel

From 1954 to 1980, Abravanel also directed the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, where young musicians gathered for summer music camps. He taught conducting at Tanglewood, where he was appointed artist-in-residence for life. In his later years he received various honors: The American Symphony Orchestra League gave him its Gold Baton in 1981; President Bush presented him with the National Medal of Arts in 1991; and in 1993 Salt Lake City renamed its Symphony Hall Abravanel Hall.

In 1946 the community orchestra known as the Utah State Symphony Orchestra began advertising for a conductor, and Abravanel applied, stating that he wanted to build a permanent orchestra of his own. He was selected from a field of 40 applicants for the position, receiving a one-year contract. In accepting the Utah offer he had to reject a lucrative contract from Radio City Music Hall, and he ended up working without pay several times during the orchestra's darkest days. The one-year contract became a 32-year career. During that time Abravanel built the orchestra from a part-time community orchestra into a well-respected, professional ensemble with recording contracts with Vanguard, Vox, Angel, and CBS. He lobbied for years for a permanent home for the orchestra, and realized this dream when Salt Lake's Symphony Hall opened in September 1979, shortly after he retired for health reasons.

Abravanel was known as Maurice de Abravanel until 1938. He married singer Friedel Schako in 1933 and the couple moved to Paris that year when the Nazis came to power. The marriage ended in divorce in 1940, after Schako eloped with the conductor Otto Klemperer: the pair "went careering around the country...leaving a trail of unpaid bills." In 1947, Abravanel married Lucy Menasse Carasso; they remained married until her death. He married his third wife, Carolyn Firmage, in 1987. He died in 1993 in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the age of 90.

In mid-spring of 1936, he received an offer from the Metropolitan Opera in New York to come and conduct the German and French repertoire. At age 33, Abravanel became the youngest contracted conductor in the history of the Met. He was offered a three-year contract, only two years of which were fulfilled, due to internal politics at the Met. For the next several years, Abravanel filled several temporary conducting stints on and around Broadway, and tried to emphasize Weill's music wherever possible.

Weill left Paris for London, and then New York (1935), and the Abravanels left Paris for Australia (1934). Maurice had been offered a chance to direct both the Melbourne and the Sydney opera. After a six-week journey through the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean, he arrived to be acclaimed as the "eminent continental conductor."

Because of the rise of Adolf Hitler, prominent Jewish musicians were being forced to leave Germany. Feeling this danger, Abravanel chose to relocate to Paris along with Kurt Weill in 1933.

After two years in Altenburg, Abravanel was appointed conductor at his first major opera house in Kassel. In 1931, the director of the Berlin State Opera saw him conduct a performance of Verdi's La forza del destino. He asked him to come to Berlin and conduct a performance at the Berlin State Opera. The orchestra was impressed and applauded Abravanel. This was important because at that time the orchestra decided whether a guest conductor would be asked to return. Abravanel became a regular guest conductor.

In 1925, Abravanel received a position as choral director in Zwickau, in Saxony. He spent two years there, conducting the operetta repertoire. Because of his success in Zwickau, he was given a position as regular conductor at a better theatre in Altenburg.

In 1924, the theatre in Neustrelitz burned down, and the four conductors found work elsewhere. The members of the orchestra asked Abravanel if he would conduct performances at the castle. He conducted orchestra concerts twice a week at the castle with no rehearsal. He even received some pay.

Abravanel lived in Germany from 1922 to 1933, heavily involving himself in the music scene there. He lived in Paris from 1933 to 1936, serving as music director of Balanchine's Paris Ballet, then conducting for two years in Australia. In 1936 Abravanel accepted a post at New York's Metropolitan Opera, becoming at age 33 the youngest conductor the Met had ever hired. He became a U.S. citizen in 1943. In 1947 he was hired as music director of the Utah Symphony, and over the next 30 years raised the ensemble to international prominence, leading the symphony in live radio broadcasts and releasing more than 100 commercial recordings.

In 1922, during the depression of the Weimar Republic, Abravanel, then age 19, moved to Berlin. Despite the difficult economic situation, Berlin supported three opera houses, which staged performances every night of the year. Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Richard Strauss and Otto Klemperer were all conducting opera in Berlin at that time.

Maurice Abravanel (January 6, 1903 – September 22, 1993) was an American classical music conductor. He is remembered as the conductor of the Utah Symphony Orchestra for over 30 years.