Laszlo Halasz

Laszlo Halasz (6 June 1905 in Debrecen, Hungary – 26 October 2001 in Port Washington, New York) was an opera director, conductor, and pianist. In 1943 he was appointed the first director of the New York City Opera; a position he held until 1951. He later served on music faculties of the Peabody Conservatory of Music and the Eastman School of Music as part of their conducting and opera departments. He was married to the cellist Suzette Forgues Halasz for more than 50 years. He studied at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, where his teachers included Bela Bartok, Ernst von Dohnanyi, Leo Weiner and Zoltan Kodaly. He debuted as a pianist in 1928. and joined the Royal Hungarian State Opera as an assistant conductor. In 1930, he became an assistant to George Szell at the German Opera in Prague, and in 1931 he gave up his career as a recitalist to focus on conducting. He became music director of the Sakharoff Ballet in 1932, and made his debut at the Vienna Volksoper in 1933. In 1935 and 1936, he was an assistant to Arturo Toscanini and Bruno Walter at the Salzburg Festival. When Toscanini moved to New York, in 1936, he invited Mr. Halasz to become his assistant at the NBC Symphony. He was appointed chorus master of the St. Louis Opera Company, and became conductor debut there in 1937, leading Wagner's ''Tristan und Isolde'' in a last-minute substitution for the conductor Leo Blech. He was made director of the newly-formed New York City Opera in 1943, and had a turbulent tenure until being sacked in 1951. He then worked as a record producer, undertaking a series of opera and symphonic projects for the Remington label, both in Europe and the United States, including concerto recordings by the pianists Jorge Bolet and Edward Kilenyi. He also conducted opera at houses in Frankfurt, Barcelona, Budapest, London and South America.