The son of a lawyer, Franz Allers studied violin, piano, composition, and conducting at the State Academy of Music in Berlin from 1923 until 1926. He began his career in 1926 as music director at the theater in his hometown of Carlsbad (present-day Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) and that same year moved to the Vereinigtes Stadttheater Barmen-Elberfeld, which later became the Wuppertal Stadttheater, as a solo répétiteur. There, he was promoted to music director in 1927 and specialized in operettas in the course of the following years. That summer he served as musical assistant at the Bayreuth Festival, a position he also held two years later at the Wagner Festival in Paris.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Allers—a Jew—was among the first to fall victim to the purges at the theater in Wuppertal. The local chapter of the Nazi Party blocked the performance of an operetta conducted by Allers scheduled for March 9, and he was banned from the opera house. Without any opportunities to work on German stages, he fled to Czechoslovakia in March of 1933 and accepted a temporary position as music director at the theater in Aussig (present-day Ústí nad Labem). He served as conductor of the opera’s orchestra over the following years but never managed to secure a permanent employment contract. Furthermore, the conditions of these temporary engagements were considerably worse than in Wuppertal. After the annexation of Austria in March of 1938, the National Socialists continued to gain ground in Czechoslovakia, and Allers once again found himself without work.
When German troops entered the Sudetenland in early October of 1938 following the conclusion of the Munich Agreement, Allers resolved to flee. He escaped to London via Ostend, Belgium, before going into exile in the United States, where he arrived at October 20, 1938. Completely destitute, he had to build a new life. He first worked as a piano teacher and then conducted the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo on its tours through the United States and South America between 1939 and 1944, after which he returned to teaching piano. It wasn’t until January of 1946 that he managed to secure a permanent position at a Broadway musical theater in New York. Allers conducted countless musicals in the years that followed, including the world premier of My Fair Lady, which quickly became an international hit and earned him a Tony Award. He also worked on film and television productions and conducted performances at the New York City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. In the course of the 1950s and 1960s he conducted nearly every major symphony orchestra in America and toured through Europe, frequently returning to Germany. From 1973 until his retirement in 1976 he served as chief conductor of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich. Allers continued to give guest performances in the United States until 1984. He died on January 26, 1995, in Las Vegas.
1905 Carlsbad
1995 Las Vegas