Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austrian-American composer and conductor, born in Brünn, Moravia (then Austria-Hungary, now Brno), and a celebrated child prodigy in Vienna, where he built an early career that included conducting the Hamburg Opera by age twenty-four. Fleeing Nazi persecution, he relocated to Hollywood in 1934 at the invitation of director Max Reinhardt and adopted United States citizenship in 1943, remaining in California for the rest of his life. His output spans six operas, including Die tote Stadt, alongside symphonic and chamber works and sixteen Hollywood film scores, notably for Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Kings Row, which helped define the sound of dramatic film music. He died in Los Angeles in 1957, following a severe stroke suffered the previous year.

Once critically neglected after his emigration, as concert audiences dismissed his lushly late-Romantic idiom as old-fashioned, Korngold underwent a major revival beginning with a 1972 reissue of his music, and he is now recognized as a pioneering figure in film scoring whose symphonic Hollywood style directly influenced later composers such as John Williams. His operas and concert works are increasingly programmed by major institutions, cementing his standing as a key bridge between the late-Romantic Viennese tradition and twentieth-century film music.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Wolfgang_Korngold