KORNGOLD Life & times

1897

LIFE: Erich Korngold is born on 29 May into a Jewish family in Brno, the second son of the influential music critic Julius Korngold and Josefine Korngold, a pianist and amateur singer.

TIMES: Thomas Edison is granted a patent in the US for his kinetoscope, a forerunner of the movie projector that allows a single viewer to watch a film through a peephole.

1910

LIFE: Conducted by Felix von Weingartner, the 13-year-old Korngold’s ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman) is a spectacular success at its premiere at the Vienna Opera House.

TIMES: The world’s first ever public radio broadcast is made from the Met Opera in New York, with singers including Enrico Caruso performing arias from Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci.

1957

LIFE: His health impaired by a stroke the previous year, he dies on 29 November, aged 60. He is buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

TIMES: Playing a gig with The Quarrymen at St Peter’s Church in Liverpool, John Lennon meets enthusiastic guitar-player Paul Mccartney, who later joins the group himself.

1920

LIFE: His three-act opera Die tote Stadt, whose libretto is co-written by his father and himself, has simultaneous premieres in Hamburg and Cologne, conducted by Egon Pollak and Otto Klemperer respectively.

TIMES: On the same day that Adolf Hitler addresses its members in Munich, the German Workers Party changes its title to National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party.

1934

LIFE: An invitation to Hollywood to supervise the music for a film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream ignites a career as a film composer that will, in 1939, win him an Oscar for The Adventures of Robin Hood.

TIMES: The death of Edward Elgar at the age of 76 in February is followed by those of fellow British composers Gustav Holst and Frederick Delius in May and June respectively.

1947

LIFE: His Violin Concerto is premiered by Jascha Heifetz, whose performance leads Korngold to describe him as ‘Caruso and Paganini in one person’.

TIMES: The Cold War effectively begins when US President Harry Truman announces The Truman Doctrine, a foreign policy aimed at preventing Soviet geopolitical expansion.