Clemens Krauss

Clemens Heinrich Krauss (31 March 189316 May 1954) was an Austrian conductor and opera impresario, particularly associated with the music of Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss and Richard Wagner. He founded the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic and conducted it until 1954. Family and early life Krauss was born in Vienna to Clementine Krauss, then a 15-year-old dancer in the Vienna Imperial Opera Ballet, later a leading actress and operetta singer, niece of the prominent nineteenth-century operatic soprano Gabrielle Krauss. His natural father, Chevalier Hector (1851-1916), came from a family of wealthy Phanariot bankers resident in Vienna. Baltazzi's older sister Helene was married to Baron Albin von Vetsera and was the mother of Baroness Mary Vetsera, who was accordingly Clemens Krauss' first cousin. Krauss sang in the Hofkapelle (Imperial Choir) as a Vienna Choir Boy because of his ″extraordinarily beautiful soprano voice". He graduated from the Vienna Conservatory in 1912, after studying composition with Hermann Graedener and theory with Richard Heuberger there. He was then appointed chorus master in the Brünn Theatre, Moravia, (1912-1913), where he made his conducting debut in 1913. He was first married to soprano Margarethe Abraham (1889–1963). They had two sons, Octavian and Oliver. The Romanian soprano Viorica Ursuleac, who often sang under him, became his second wife.