He earned diplomas in piano and conducting from the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and a doctorate in musicology from University of Cologne.
[1] In 1951 Andersson immigrated to the United States to assume a post on the music faculty at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa.
During his thirty-year association with the NOO, he conducted over 160 performances of more than fifty operas, including Die Fledermaus (directed by Armando Agnini, 1955), Les contes d'Hoffmann, Il tabarro, Susannah (with Phyllis Curtin, Norman Treigle, and Richard Cassilly), Le nozze di Figaro (with Italo Tajo), Lucia di Lammermoor (with the young Plácido Domingo as Arturo), Faust (with Treigle), Tosca (with Dorothy Kirsten and Cesare Bardelli), La traviata (with Audrey Schuh), Gianni Schicchi, Hoffmann again (with Beverly Sills and Treigle), Otello (with James McCracken, Raina Kabaivanska, and Cornell MacNeil), La sonnambula (with Gianna D'Angelo, Nicola Monti, and Nicola Moscona), Il trovatore (with Leyla Gencer, directed by Tito Capobianco), Madama Butterfly, Samson et Dalila, Rigoletto (with Roberta Peters), Tannhäuser (with Ticho Parly), Markheim (world premiere, with Treigle and Schuh, directed by the composer, Carlisle Floyd), Turandot (with Birgit Nilsson), Il barbiere di Siviglia, Lucia again (now with Domingo as Edgardo), Elektra (with Inge Borkh and Regina Resnik), Les pêcheurs de perles, Aida, Manon (with Montserrat Caballé), Der fliegende Holländer, Pagliacci, Carmen, Cavalleria rusticana, Fidelio, Manon Lescaut, Norma, Attila (with Justino Díaz), Arabella (with Claire Watson), The Medium (with Resnik), Salome, Lucia (now with Sills), Aida (now with Jon Vickers), Thaïs (with Carol Neblett), La Juive (with Richard Tucker), Ariadne auf Naxos, La bohème (with Katia Ricciarelli), Lohengrin (with William Cochran), Hérodiade, Les Huguenots (with Marisa Galvany, Rita Shane, and Susanne Marsee), Macbeth (with Sherrill Milnes), Der Rosenkavalier (with Evelyn Lear), La favorite, Andrea Chénier (with Harry Theyard), Die Walküre (with Rita Hunter and Johanna Meier), La traviata again (with Karan Armstrong), Ernani (with Renato Francesconi [it]) and Don Pasquale.
In the fall of 1966, Andersson led the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor on The Bell Telephone Hour's "Sights and Sounds of New Orleans".
The soloists were d'Angelo, Domingo, Enzo Sordello, Thomas Paul, Bennie Ray, and Linda Neumann, and it was directed by Arthur Cosenza.