Georg Tintner
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Georg Tintner (May 22, 1917 – October 2, 1999) was a Viennese-born conductor.
As a child he was a singer in the Vienna Boys' Choir, directed by Franz Schalk. At Vienna State Academy he studied composition with Joseph Marx and conducting with Felix Weingartner. Soon he was assistant conductor of the Vienna Volksoper People's Opera.
Due to the persecution of Jews, Tintner moved out of Vienna in 1938, arriving in Auckland, New Zealand in 1940. He conducted a church choir until after the war, when he took over the Auckland Choral Society (in 1947) and the Auckland String Players (in 1948). He was naturalised in 1946. In 1954, he went to Australia and became resident conductor of its National Opera before joining the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera in 1957. Tintner is credited with pioneering televised opera in Australia.
He spent a year with the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra (1966-67) and three years with Sadler's Wells Opera (1967-70) before returning to Australia as Music Director of the West Australian Opera. He rejoined the Australian Opera (formerly the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera) in 1974, and became Music Director of the Queensland Theatre Orchestra in 1976.
In 1987 he moved to Canada, where he became director of Symphony Nova Scotia. In 1998, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. On 2 October 1999, after a six-year struggle with cancer, he jumped to his death from the balcony of his 11th-storey Halifax apartment.
Tintner was described as "one of the greatest living Bruckner conductors." He recorded a much-praised complete cycle of Bruckner symphonies for the Naxos CD label shortly before the end of his life (recording sessions: 1995-98). Naxos is in addition releasing a "Tintner Memorial Edition" comprising re-releases of some of his earlier recordings of composers other than Bruckner. A disc of Tintner's piano music has also been released by the same label, valuably revealing a side of the man long-forgotten since his student days.
