Kurt Prerauer was born on April 1, 1901, in Landeshut (present-day Kamienna Góra), Silesia, as the son of a Jewish shoe manufacturer. He received piano and violin lessons at an early age. He studied musicology and law at the universities of Breslau (present-day Wrocław) and Munich and began his career in 1923 as a répétiteur at the Oldenburg State Theater. After a short engagement at the Städtische Bühnen in Essen, he moved to the Berlin State Opera in 1925, where within a year he advanced to become the personal assistant to Chief Music Director Leo Blech.
In June of 1933, like most Jewish members of the ensemble, Prerauer was dismissed under the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” His planned appearance at the Bayreuth Festival was also canceled at the instigation of the festival’s director, Winifred Wagner.
Prerauer fled to England, where in 1934 he received an engagement as conductor of the Royal Grand Opera Company. A tour with this ensemble took him to Australia later that same year, where he settled permanently. In the following years, he worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, wrote for various journals, taught at the Alfred Hill Academy of Music, and became head of the opera school at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In the 1950s, he gave a series of performances in Europe with the opera singer Marea Wolkowsky, whom he had married in 1942, serving as her manager and piano accompanist. In the years that followed, he was active primarily as a tough yet prominent critic and an important driving force in Australian music life.
Kurt Prerauer died on November 29, 1967, in Sydney.
1901 Landeshut/Kamienna Góra
1967 Sydney