Boris Papandopulo

Boris Papandopulo (February 25, 1906 – October 16, 1991) was a Croatian composer and conductor of Greek and Russian Jewish descent. He was the son of Greek nobleman Konstantin Papandopulo and Croatian opera singer Maja Strozzi-Pečić and one of the most distinctive Croatian musicians of the 20th century. Papandopulo also worked as music writer, journalist, reviewer, pianist and piano accompanist; however, he achieved the peaks of his career in music as a composer. His composing oeuvre is imposing (counting cca 460 works): with great success he created instrumental (orchestral, concertante, chamber and solo), vocal and instrumental (for solo voice and choir), stage music and film music. In all these kinds and genres he left a string of anthology-piece compositions of great artistic value. “Born, growing up and being brought up in a family that had always been tightly connected with music and the theatre”, he devoted himself to music very early on. He first of all took private lessons in piano, and then studied composition at the Music Academy in Zagreb (where he attended the lectures of Dugan, Lhotka and Dobronić, and studied composition in and graduated from the class of Blagoje Bersa in 1929). In Vienna, at the New Vienna Conservatory, he studied conducting under Dirk Fock (1928–1930). During two periods (1928–1934 and 1938–1946) he was a conductor of the Croatian Singing Association called Kolo, Zagreb, and from 1931 to 1934 had posts of conductor of the Society Orchestra of the Croatian Music Institute and choirmaster of the "Ivan Filipović" Teachers’ Singing Association (which he himself founded in 1933). From 1935 to 1938, he worked as a teacher at the State Music School in Split, and was conductor of the Zvonimir Music Association, as well as, from 1940 to 1945, of the Zagreb Opera (from 1943 to 1945 he was its director). At the same time he was a conductor of the orchestra of Radio Zagreb (1942–1945). After World War II he was a director of the Rijeka Opera (1946–1948 and 1953–1959), while, from 1948 to 1953 he was an opera conductor and a teacher in Sarajevo. He took up his career in Zagreb again as a conductor of the Zagreb Opera (1959–1968) and then the Split Opera (1968–1974). He was a regular guest-conductor of the Komedija Theatre in Zagreb, as well as of the Cairo Symphony Orchestra.