Leopold Damrosch

Capitulating to the wishes of his parents he entered the University of Berlin and completed his PhD in medicine but during his spare time he studied violin under Ries, and thoroughbass with Dehn and Bohmer.

He gained fame as a violinist and began to play to large audiences in many major German cities including Berlin and Hamburg.

In 1862 Damrosch founded a symphonic society in Breslau with an orchestra of eighty performers, modelled after the Gewandhaus concerts of Leipzig.

The first concert of this society was later that year and consisted of a programme of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and others.

The co-operation of these societies reached its climax in the great "musical festival" which was held in the armory of the 7th regiment in New York, from 3 till 7 May 1881.

An additional chorus of 1,000 young ladies from the Normal College and 250 boys from the Church choirs took part in the afternoon concerts.

In September 1884, he began a remarkable series of operatic performances as General Manager and chief conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

The company comprised some of the greatest artists of the German opera houses, and, in contrast with the hitherto prevailing mode, every part, even the smallest, was carefully presented.

Twelve of the operas performed were comparative novelties, the most important of which were Wagner's Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and Die Walküre, and Beethoven's Fidelio.