The German conductor Josef Keilberth (1908-1968) joined his city’s Opera House in 1925 as a repetiteur following studies in his birth place, later becoming chorus-master. He was appointed Generalmusikdirecktor in 1935, a post he held for five years. In 1940 he was selected as conductor of the Deutsche Philharmonie in Prague. He was in charge of the Staatsoper in Dresden from 1945 to 1949 but also conducted regularly at the Staatsoper in Berlin between 1948 and 1951. Joining the Staatsoper in Munich in 1951, he was made Generalmusikdirecktor the following year, a position he held until his death in 1968 whilst conducting a performance of Tristan. He appeared in Britain with the visiting Hamburg State Opera Company at the Edinburgh Festival in 1952, the year in which he also first conducted at the Bayreuth Festival. Keilberth conducted the Ring cyle in the years 1952-56 in addition to Lohengrin in 1953-54, Tannhäuser in 1954-55, and Der fliegende Höllander in 1955-56. He was a much-admired interpreter of Bruckner, Pfitzner, Richard Strauss and Wagner. His reading of Die Meistersinger was made at the reopening of the renovated Staatsoper building in Munich in 1963.