Peter Herman Adler was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

 born in Austria–Hungary in Gablonz an der Neiße, which is now in the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

.

Adler was the music and artistic director of the NBC Opera Theatre

NBC Opera Theatre

The NBC Opera Theatre was an American opera company operated by the National Broadcasting Company from 1949 to 1964. The company was established specifically for the purpose of filming both established and new operas for television...

 (1950–1964) and the National Educational Television

National Educational Television

National Educational Television was an American non-commercial educational public television network in the United States from May 16, 1954 to October 4, 1970...

. He was a pioneer of televised

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 broadcast of opera, commissioning such works as Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

's Amahl and the Night Visitors

Amahl and the Night Visitors

Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on December 24, 1951, in New York City at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast...

and Maria Golovin

Maria Golovin

Maria Golovin is an English language opera in three acts by Gian Carlo Menotti. It is through-composed and centers on a romantic encounter between a blind recluse named Donato and the title character, a married woman living in a European country a few years after a recent war...

, Norman Dello Joio

Norman Dello Joio

- Life :He was born Nicodemo DeGioio in New York City to Italian immigrants. He began his musical career as organist and choir director at the Star of the Sea Church on City Island in New York at age 14. His father was an organist, pianist, and vocal coach and coached many opera stars from the...

's The Trial at Rouen

The Triumph of St. Joan

The Triumph of St. Joan was originally an opera in three acts by Norman Dello Joio to an English language libretto on the subject of the martyrdom of Joan of Arc by Dello Joio and Joseph Machilis. It was premiered at Sarah Lawrence College on May 9, 1950. Although the opera was received positively,...

, and Bohuslav Martinů

Bohuslav Martinu

Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

's The Marriage

The Marriage (opera)

The Marriage is a comic opera in 2 acts by Bohuslav Martinů, to the composer's own libretto, after the play of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. The opera was commissioned for television by the NBC, and the NBC Opera Theatre performed the work's world premiere on their television program NBC TV Opera...

; Jack Beeson

Jack Beeson

Jack Beeson was an American composer. He was known particularly for his operas, the best known of which are Lizzie Borden, Hello Out There! and The Sweet Bye and Bye.-Biography:...

's My Heart's in the Highlands

My Heart's in the Highlands

-Track listing:Side one# "My Heart's in the Highlands"# "John Anderson, My Jo"# "Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon"# "Moll's Meek, Molly's Sweet"Side two# "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose"# "Green Grow the Rashes, O"# "My Jean"...

, Thomas Pasatieri

Thomas Pasatieri

Thomas Pasatieri is an American opera composer.He began composing at age 10 and, as a teenager, studied with Nadia Boulanger...

's The Trial of Mary Lincoln and Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...

's La Cubana. He was also involved in the early career development of such singers as Leontyne Price

Leontyne Price

Mary Violet Leontyne Price is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant",...

, George London

George London

George London may be:*George London , Canadian operatic bass-baritone*George London *Sir George Ernest London, of the Newfoundland Commission of Government...

 and Mario Lanza

Mario Lanza

right|thumb|[[MGM]] still, circa 1949Mario Lanza was an American tenor and Hollywood movie star of the late 1940s and the 1950s. The son of Italian emigrants, he began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16....

. He later conducted the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is a professional American symphony orchestra based in Baltimore, Maryland.In September 2007, Maestra Marin Alsop led her inaugural concerts as the Orchestra’s twelfth music director, making her the first woman to head a major American orchestra.The BSO Board...

 from 1959 to 1968. He conducted the United States premiere of Ernst Bloch's opera MacBeth at the Juilliard School in May 1973.

He made only one foray into movies, adapting the music for "The Great Caruso

The Great Caruso

The Great Caruso is a 1951 biographical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by Richard Thorpe and produced by Joe Pasternak with Jesse L. Lasky as associate producer from a screenplay by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig. The original music was by Johnny Green and the cinematography by...

" in 1950, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.