Emil Cooper was a Russian and American conductor, born in Kherson on December 1, 1877. He studied violin and composition at the music school in Odessa, then turned to conducting and took lessons from Arthur Nikisch. He made his conducting debut in 1896.
Cooper worked at the Kyiv Opera from 1900 to 1904 and later at Zimin’s Private Opera in Moscow. In 1909, he conducted the first performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Golden Cockerel. From 1908, he was a regular conductor of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society’s symphony concerts, where he led premieres of works by Nikolai Medtner, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Scriabin, and Reinhold Glière. He also conducted Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in the Russian Seasons, with Feodor Chaliapin in the title role.
Cooper taught chamber ensemble at the Moscow Conservatory in 1918. He later conducted at the St. Petersburg State Theatre of Opera and Ballet and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and taught conducting and orchestration at the St. Petersburg Conservatory from 1919 to 1924. In 1924, after a leave of absence, he settled in Paris. He toured extensively, became artistic director of the Riga Opera, and later conducted in Chicago. He continued performing in Europe until 1939 and moved to the United States in 1940.
After the Second World War, Cooper was one of the conductors at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he led the American premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes and a new edition of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina. From 1950, he worked in Montreal and broadened the local repertoire, conducting operas by Sergei Prokofiev and Gian Carlo Menotti that had not previously been heard in Canada. Recordings of his work include Ponchielli’s La Gioconda and Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. He died in New York City on November 19, 1960.