34 Facts About Maurice Abravanel

Maurice Abravanel was an American classical music conductor.

Maurice Abravanel is remembered as the conductor of the Utah Symphony Orchestra for over 30 years.

Maurice Abravanel came from an illustrious Sephardic Jewish family, which was expelled from Spain in 1492.

Maurice Abravanel's ancestors settled in Salonika in 1517, and his parents were both born there.

In 1909, the Maurice Abravanel family moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where his father, Edouard de Maurice Abravanel, was a successful pharmacist.

The young Maurice Abravanel played four-hand piano arrangements with Ansermet, began to compose, and met composers such as Darius Milhaud and Igor Stravinsky.

Maurice Abravanel was passionate about music and knew he wanted a career as a musician.

Maurice Abravanel became the pianist for the municipal theatre and music critic for the city's daily newspaper.

Maurice Abravanel's father insisted on a career in medicine and sent him to the University of Zurich, where he was miserable at having to dissect corpses.

Maurice Abravanel wrote to his father that he would rather be second percussionist in an orchestra than a doctor, and his father finally relented.

Maurice Abravanel lived in Germany from 1922 to 1933, heavily involving himself in the music scene there.

Maurice Abravanel 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 Maurice Abravanel accepted a post at New York's Metropolitan Opera, becoming at age 33 the youngest conductor the Met had ever hired.

Maurice Abravanel married singer Friedel Schako in 1933 and the couple moved to Paris that year when the Nazis came to power.

Maurice Abravanel married his third wife, Carolyn Firmage, in 1987.

Maurice Abravanel died in 1993 in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the age of 90.

Maurice Abravanel became a student of the composer Kurt Weill, who had to accept up to 46 students to make ends meet.

Maurice Abravanel later commented that Weill was "a lousy teacher", but became his close friend and enthusiastic supporter.

Maurice Abravanel conducted orchestra concerts twice a week at the castle with no rehearsal.

In 1925, Maurice Abravanel received a position as choral director in Zwickau, in Saxony.

Maurice Abravanel spent two years there, conducting the operetta repertoire.

Maurice Abravanel asked him to come to Berlin and conduct a performance at the Berlin State Opera.

Maurice Abravanel had the opportunity to conduct the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, the regular conductor of which was Pierre Monteux.

Maurice Abravanel met George Balanchine in Paris and conducted his ballets, as well as conducting the works of his old teacher and friend, Kurt Weill.

Maurice Abravanel had been offered a chance to direct both the Melbourne and the Sydney opera.

Maurice Abravanel conducted a 13-week season in Melbourne and a two-month season in Sydney with Verdi's Aida as the opener in both cities and a balanced selection of the standard repertoire, including Puccini, Wagner and Bizet.

At age 33, Maurice Abravanel became the youngest contracted conductor in the history of the Met.

Maurice Abravanel was offered a three-year contract, only two years of which were fulfilled, due to internal politics at the Met.

In 1946 the community orchestra known as the Utah State Symphony Orchestra began advertising for a conductor, and Maurice Abravanel applied, stating that he wanted to build a permanent orchestra of his own.

Maurice Abravanel was selected from a field of 40 applicants for the position, receiving a one-year contract.

Maurice Abravanel 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.

From 1954 to 1980, Maurice Abravanel directed the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, where young musicians gathered for summer music camps.

Maurice Abravanel taught conducting at Tanglewood, where he was appointed artist-in-residence for life.

Maurice Abravanel is remembered for making several classic recordings with the Utah Symphony Orchestra for the US Vanguard label, including the Berlioz Requiem, orchestral works by Arthur Honegger, Erik Satie, Edgar Varese and Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as the first complete recording of Gustav Mahler's nine symphonies by an American orchestra.