Richard Bruno Heydrich

Richard Bruno Heydrich (23 February 1865 – 24 August 1938) was a German opera singer (tenor), composer, and founder of the Halle Conservatory.

[2] A talented musician since childhood, Heydrich would find great success as a musical teacher, through the Halle Conservatory, which he ran with his wife, Elisabeth.

His father, Carl Julius Reinhold Heydrich, was an apprentice cabinetmaker and his mother Ernestine Wilhelmine, took care of the five children.

This musical ability proved useful as Bruno and his younger brother Richard would often perform at local fairs in order to supplant the family's income.

In spite of this success, he struggled to maintain a solo career as a tenor as he continued to financially support his mother and younger sisters.

[8][9] The wealth generated by the school and Elisabeth's inheritance afforded the Heydrichs a comfortable upper-middle class life style, to the extent that the family were able to employ two full-time maids and a butler.

The family soon became integrated with the upper echelon of Halle society, forming close personal relationships with the officials of the city, such as the Mayor; Bruno even joined the elite Freemason lodge of the Three Sabres, where he would organize concerts.

Bruno did not end up receiving the subsidy, and with the increased musical competition from the invention of radios and the gramophones, it left the family in a precarious financial position for the following decade.

Bruno Heydrich’s eldest son, Reinhard initially intended to inherit his father's musical school, but went on to become a Nazi official and prominent architect of the Holocaust.

Fearing an antisemitic backlash from the large Protestant community of Halle, Bruno would sue to have the next edition of the music encyclopedia corrected.