Alexander Smallens

Alexander Smallens
Born	January 1, 1889 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died	November 24, 1972 Tucson, Arizona, United States
Resting place	East Lawn Palms Cemetery & Mortuary, Tucson, Pima County, Arizona, USA

Alexander Smallens (January 1, 1889 – November 24, 1972) was a Russian-born American conductor and music director.

Smallens was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and emigrated to the United States as a child, becoming an American citizen in 1919. He studied at the New York Institute of Musical Art until 1909, when he traveled to France to study at the Conservatoire de Paris.

Returning to the United States, Smallens was a conductor or music director at several American music organizations including the Boston Opera Company (1911–1914), the Anna Pavlova Ballet Company (1917–1919), the Chicago Opera Company (1919–1923), the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company (1924–1930), the Philadelphia Orchestra (1928–1934) and the Radio City Music Hall (1947–1950).

In addition, Smallens worked briefly on Broadway, conducting the premieres of Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts in 1934 and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess the next year. (Both works were operas, not the musicals normally expected in Broadway theatres.) Smallens also conducted the Porgy and Bess revivals on Broadway in 1942 and 1953, as well as the famous 1952 world tour of the work, which culminated in that 1953 Broadway production.

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