The Nazi rise to power made it imprudent for Klemperer, born a Jew (although as an adult converted to Catholicism), to remain in Germany. He emigrated in 1933, going first to Switzerland and then to the United States, where he became director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. During this period he also studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg , another European refugee, whose operas he had conducted at the Kroll.
An operation for a brain tumour in 1939, although successful, forced Klemperer...