Franz Allers

Franz Allers (August 6, 1905 - January 26, 1995) was a European-American conductor of ballet, opera, Broadway musicals, film scores, and symphony orchestras.

Franz Allers was born in Carlsbad, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic) in 1905. He started playing the violin at the age of 7. In 1920, he moved to Berlin where he became a violinist in the Berlin Philharmonic. He had a distinguished career in Europe as an opera and symphonic conductor.

He moved to the United States in 1938. Allers met his first wife, singer Carolyn Shaffer, in Chicago in 1939. While working on Broadway, Allers, his wife and their daughter, Carol, lived in Riverdale, New York. In later life he moved back to Germany and lived in Munich with his second wife, German actress/playwright Janne Furch-Allers (née Ertel). Janne Furch-Allers died in 1992 at the age of 76.

In 1995, Allers died from complications from pneumonia at the Desert Springs Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada while traveling to California. He was 89.

According to The New York Times obituary, "Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times wrote that Allers, along with the conductor Maurice Abravanel, 'completely revised the standards of Broadway pit work,' demanding the highest quality from both the orchestra players and the singers."

In 1947, he conducted the original Broadway production of Brigadoon. In 1951, he conducted the original Broadway production of Paint Your Wagon.

He conducted the score for the 1954 animated film Hansel & Gretel.

In 1957, he conducted the score to the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady and would go on to win the Tony Award for Best Conductor and Musical Director.

...
Wikipedia