Abravanel was born in Salonika, Rumelia Eyalet, Ottoman Empire (modern Thessaloniki, Greece).

For several years, the Abravanels lived in the same house as Ernest Ansermet, the conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

In 1936 Abravanel accepted a post at New York's Metropolitan Opera, becoming at age 33 the youngest conductor the Met had ever hired.

[citation needed] He married singer Friedel Schako in 1933 and the couple moved to Paris that year when the Nazis came to power.

The marriage ended in divorce in 1940, after Schako eloped with the conductor Otto Klemperer: the pair "went careering around the country...leaving a trail of unpaid bills.

Despite the difficult economic situation, Berlin supported three opera houses, which staged performances every night of the year.

Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Richard Strauss and Otto Klemperer were all conducting opera in Berlin at that time.

In 1931, the director of the Berlin State Opera saw him conduct a performance of Verdi's La forza del destino.

Walter recommended Abravanel as a guest conductor at the Paris Opera, and he was able to cast, rehearse, and conduct Mozart's Don Giovanni there.

After a six-week journey through the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean, he arrived to be acclaimed as the "eminent continental conductor."

[citation needed] For the next several years, Abravanel filled several temporary conducting stints on and around Broadway, and tried to emphasize Weill's music wherever possible.

In accepting the Utah offer he had to reject a lucrative contract from Radio City Music Hall, and he ended up working without pay several times during the orchestra's darkest days.

He lobbied for years for a permanent home for the orchestra, and realized this dream when Salt Lake's Symphony Hall opened in September 1979, shortly after he retired for health reasons.

Abravanel is remembered for making several classic recordings with the Utah Symphony for the US Vanguard label, including the Berlioz Requiem, orchestral works by Arthur Honegger, Erik Satie, Edgar Varèse and Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as the first complete recording of Gustav Mahler's nine symphonies by an American orchestra.