Kurt Herbert Adler Signed (1 results)
More imagesPublished by Comstock Editions, Sausalito, 1981
- Softcover
- First Edition
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Add to basketOriginal Pictorial wrappers. Condition: Very Good+. First Edition. Autograph; Oblong Quarto; 96 pages; Contents clean and secure in original pictorial glossy wrappers. Inscribed and SIGNED on endpaper: "To Roger Stevens / with sincere appreciation and / great affection. / Kurt H. Adler / San Francisco November 1981" Kurt Herbert… Adler (1905 â" 1988) was an Austrianâ"American conductor and opera house director. Following the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, as a Jew he was forced to leave and went to the Chicago City Opera Company as assistant chorus director where he worked for five years. Gaetano Merola, then General Director of the San Francisco Opera, heard of him and, over the telephone, invited him to the San Francisco Opera in 1943 as chorus director. When Merola died in 1953, Adler was confirmed as General Director. By 1969, Adler expanded the season to eleven operas, giving five or six performances each. He searched out emerging new singers by attending performances in major and minor opera houses. Also, he developed stronger connections to opera stage directors in an attempt to strengthen the dramatic and theatrical elements of the works, leading to a strong relationship with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. He warmly inscribed this book to Roger Lacey Stevens (1910 â" 1998) was an American theatrical producer, arts administrator, and real estate executive. He was the founding Chairman of both the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1961) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1965). In politics, he made a mark as chairman of the Democratic Party's finance committee in 1956. He produced more than 100 plays and musicals over his career, including West Side Story, Bus Stop, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1971, he received Special Tony Award for his body of work. He became known for introducing plays by such adventurous writers as Harold Pinter, Arthur Kopit and Tom Stoppard. Stevens was the General Administrator of the Actors Studio as well as one of the producers of the Playwrights Company, a member of the board of the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA), and one of the members of a Broadway producing company he founded in 1953 with Robert Whitehead and Robert Dowling. In 1961, he was asked by President John F. Kennedy to help establish a National Cultural Center, and became Chairman of Board of Trustees of what was eventually named the Kennedy Center from 1961 to 1988. In 1965, he received an appointment from President Lyndon Johnson as first Chairman of the National Council on the Arts later named the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1986, Stevens was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.On January 13, 1988, Stevens was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. In 1988, he was also awarded the National Medal of Arts.; Signed by Biographee.
