Great musical conductor and refugee from the Third Reich.  Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, now the Polish city of Wroclaw, on May 14, 1885.  From 1927 to 1933, during the late days of the Weimar Repulbic, he was director of the Kroll Opera, the Berlin State Opera's second house.  He gave the first performances of operas by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Janacek, and other composers.  Klemperer was considered to be one of the giants in his field, the survivor of a generation of conductors stretching back to Strauss and Mahler.  He regarded Mahler on the streets of Hamburg, and in 1905 he conducted the offstage orchestra in the Second Symphony in the composer's presence.  Klemperer married the opera singer Johanna Geissler.

Klemperer left Germany as an exile in 1933 at the advent of the Hitler regime.  From 1933 to 1940 he conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1938 he reorganized the Pittsburgh Orchestra.  Returning to Europe in 1946, he directed the Budapest Opera from 1947 to 1950.  Thereafter, he was active in England and West Germany.

Klemperer's dismissal from his post in Nazi Germany was a classic example of the rejection of a titan in the arts in favor of coordinated mediocrity.  Plagued through most of his career by a paralysis resulting from brain surgery, he was often in severe pain while unknowing critics condemned him for his "solemn, intellectual approach."  He died in Zurich on July 6, 1973, at the age of 88.