Born the son of a merchant from Breslau (present-day Wrocław) on May 14, 1885, Otto Klemperer studied piano, composition, and conducting in Frankfurt and Berlin from 1901 to 1906. He made his debut in 1906 at the Neues Theater in Berlin in a production of Halévy’s Orpheus in the Underworld, before going to the German Theater in Prague in 1907 and the Stadttheater in Hamburg in 1910. Klemperer worked in Barmen-Elberfeld in 1913 and in Strasbourg from 1914 until 1917. That same year he was named chief music director in Cologne. He was appointed to the same position in Wiesbaden in 1924 and became the director of the Kroll Opera in Berlin in 1927. While he was championed by avant-garde circles for his bold productions, unrelenting vision, and support of contemporary works, he drew the ire of conservative critics and the political right for the same reasons. They denigrated him as a Jew and accused him of being a “cultural Bolshevik” who intended to destroy German culture.
Klemperer’s reputation as an outstanding artist brought him to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden following the closure of the Kroll Opera in June of 1931. However, his career came to an end in 1933 after the Nazis rose to power. “Of particular note,” the Nazis’ fateful Encyclopedia of Jews in Music commented in 1940, “is the fact that on February 13, 1933—after the seizure of power—Klemperer, the Jewish chief music director, had the audacity to stage Tannhäuser at the Berlin State Opera on the 50th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s death, which can only be taken as an intentional insult against the great German master and as a slap in the face for any reasonable person.”
Otto Klemperer emigrated to the USA in 1933, where he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. However, in 1939, a brain tumor and a bout with meningitis forced him to put his work aside for several years and effectively ended his career in the United States.
He returned to Europe in 1946 for a series of engagements as guest conductor in places like Salzburg, Paris, and Amsterdam before serving as artistic director of the Budapest Opera from 1947 until 1950. In 1954, he became Herbert von Karajan’s successor as chief conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra after the latter’s departure for Berlin. The orchestra was founded in 1945 as a recording ensemble by EMI producer Walter Legge. Between the years 1954 and 1971, Klemperer oversaw countless important gramophone recording sessions and visited institutions around the world as a sought-after conductor. Otto Klemperer died on July 6, 1973, in Zurich.
1885 Wrocław
1973 Zurich