Maurice Abravanel

Maurice Abravanel (January 6, 1903 – September 22, 1993), was a

Swiss-American Jewish conductor, born in Greece.

Abravanel was born in Saloniki (Thessalonica), Greece when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire. He came from an illustrious Sephardic Jewish family, which was expelled from Spain in 1492 (see Isaac Abrabanel). Abravanel's ancestors settled in Saloniki in 1517, and his parents were both born there. In 1909, they moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where his father Edouard de Abravanel was a very successful pharmacist.

For several years, the Abravanels lived in the same house as Ernest Ansermet, the conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. The young Abravanel played four-hand piano arrangements with Ansermet, began to compose, and met composers such as Darius Milhaud and Igor Stravinsky. He was passionate about music and knew he wanted a career as a musician. He became the pianist for the municipal theatre and music critic for the daily paper.

Maurice's father, however, insisted on a career in medicine and sent him to the University of Zürich, where he was miserable, having to dissect corpses. He wrote to his father that he would rather be second percussionist in an orchestra than a doctor, and his father finally relented.

In 1922, during the depths of the depression of the Weimar Republic, Abravanel went to Berlin. Despite the difficult economic situation, Berlin supported three opera houses, which staged performances every night of the year. Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Richard Strauss and Otto Klemperer were all conducting opera in Berlin at this time.

Because of the rise of Adolf Hitler, prominent Jewish musicians were being forced to leave Germany. Abravanel went to Paris with Kurt Weill in 1933.

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