Song:Overture
Album:Camelot: Original Broadway Cast
The 1960 Broadway show Camelot was of two Tony awards won by conductor and arranger Franz Allers. He worked on several Lerner and Loewe musicals of the 50s. He was born in 1905 in Calsbad, Czech Republic. He learned to play the violin as a child. He moved to Berlin, Germany in 1920 and was a violinist in the Berlin Philharmonic. He eventually turned to conducting and toured Europe until he moved to the US in 1938. He toured with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. He got to Broadway when Utah State Symphony Orchestra conductor Maurice Abravanel asked Allers to fill in and conduct the orchestra for the Lerner and Loewe musical Day Before Spring. They liked him so much Allers was made the permanent conductor for Lerner and Loewe. He was conductor and musical director for Paint Your Wagon, Brigadoon and then he won a Tony Award for My Fair Lady. He also won a Grammy nomination for the soundtrack of the 1959 film Hansel and Gretel. Then he won another Tony for Camelot starring Julie Andrews and Richard Burton. When Lerner and Loewe split up in 1962, Allers returned to Europe and he was music director for the Tonkunstler Orchestra in Vienna and the Gartnerplatz Theater in Munich. Later he moved back to New York and was musical director at Lincoln Center. Franz Allers died on Jan. 28, 1995 at age 89 in Las Vegas. He was travelling to California. It is said that Allers raised the standard of Broadway show orchestras and that high standard continues today. Here's a video of Overture by Franz Allers from the 1960 show Camelot.
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