Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 29. Chapters: Alexander Zakin, András Schiff, Andrew Matthews-Owen, Bart Howard, Celius Dougherty, Chih-Yi Chen, Coenraad V. Bos, Dalton Baldwin, David McSkimming, Edwin McArthur, Edwin Schneider, Elizabeth Norman McKay, Ernest Lush, Ernest Walker (composer), Félix Lavilla, Frederick B. Kiddle, Geoffrey Parsons (pianist), George Malloy, Gerald Moore, Graham Johnson (musician), Irwin Gage, Ivor Newton, James Shomate, Jörg Demus, Joshua Rosenblum, Julius Drake, Kurt Adler, Leith Stevens, Ljiljana Vukajlovic, Luigi Ricci (vocal coach), Malcolm Martineau, Martin Katz, Mary Grant Carmichael, Nigel Foster (pianist), Norman Hackforth, Paul Hamburger, Paul Ulanowsky, Pjetër Dungu, Roger Vignoles, Romola Costantino, Sammy Benskin, Samuel Sanders, Sebastian Peschko, Sergius Kagen, Sholto Kynoch, Simon Lepper, Tan Crone, Vladimir Yampolsky, Waldemar Seidel, Zoe Zeniodi, Zorica Dimitrijevic-StoSic. Excerpt: Kurt Adler (March 1, 1907 - September 21, 1977) was an Austrian classical music conductor, chorus master and pianist with a European musical education. He was best known as the chorus master and conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1943 to 1973. He conducted in Austria, Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, United States, Canada, Mexico, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary. Kurt Adler was born in Jindrichuv Hradec/Neuhaus, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), Bohemia during the Austro-Hungarian Empire to a bourgeois Jewish family. He was the only child of Siegfried Adler (born June 26, 1876 in Luka u Jihlavy, Bohemia), a textile factory owner, and Olga (Fürth) Adler (born April 3, 1883 in SuSice/Schüttenhofen, Bohemia, (now Czech Republic). Bohemia during the Austria-Hungary Empire. Both parents were murdered by the Gestapo during World War II, after they were deported to Izbica concentration camp, which served as a transfer camp, to the Belzec extermination camp in Poland on May 15, 1942. His grandparents, Jakob and Eveline Adler are buried in Neuhaus (now Jindrichuv Hradec), Hebrew Cemetery. During the 1930s many now-famous musicians, including Adler, emigrated to the United States to escape from Nazism. Adler emigrated to the United States on October 9, 1938. He sailed from Rotterdam, Holland in 1938 on the "SS Statendam". The ship was later destroyed in the Rotterdam Blitz. He was naturalized on March 21, 1944. Other musicians who emigrated to the United States and joined the New York Metropolitan Opera include Otto Klemperer, Fritz Stiedry, Paul Breisach, Max Rudolf, George Szell, Rudolf Bing, and George Schick. Kurt Adler began his professional career in Germany on the musical staff of the Berlin State Opera. He later associated with the famous German Opera Theatre in Prague (where Rudolf, Szell and Schick also served) and with the Municipal Opera House in Berlin. He joined the Metropolitan Opera in 1943, under the management of Edward Joh