Neuendorff, AdoLPh (Heinrich Anton Magnus)
Neuendorff, AdoLPh (Heinrich Anton Magnus)
Neuendorff, AdoLPh (Heinrich Anton Magnus), German-American conductor, impresario, and composer; b. Hamburg, June 13, 1843; d. N.Y., Dec. 4, 1897. He went to N.Y. in 1854 and studied violin with Matzka and Weinlich, and piano with Schilling. He appeared both as a concert violinist and pianist, and gave violin concerts in Brazil in 1861. In 1864 he went to Milwaukee, then a center of German music, and served as music director of the German theater; subsequently moved to N.Y., where he conducted German opera, including the first American performances of Lohengrin (April 3, 1871) and Die Walküre (April 2, 1877); in 1878–79 he conducted the N.Y. Phil. From 1884 to 1889 he was in Boston and became the first conductor of the Music Hall Promenade Concerts (later Boston Pops). He then conducted the Emma Juch Grand Opera Co. (1889–91). He then followed his wife, the singer Georgine von Januschowsky, to Vienna, where she was prima donna and he a conductor at the Hofoper (1893–95). Returning to N.Y., he served as director of music at Temple Emanu-El (1896) and as conductor at the Metropolitan Opera (1897). He wrote the comic operas Der Rattenfänger von Hameln (1880), Don Quixote (1882), Prince Waldmeister (1887), and The Minstrel (1892), 2 syms. (1878, 1880) and other orch. works, quartets for Men’s Voices, and songs.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis Mclntire