ARONSON, RUDOLPH:

By: Cyrus Adler, Joseph Sohn

Composer and theatrical manager; born in New York, April 8, 1856. He early manifested talent for music, and after his graduation from the New York high school was sent to the Vienna Conservatory. After completing his course there, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, devoting himself to a careful study of the French composers. He had a strong predilection for the lyrical genre, and it was the popular rather than the classic compositions that he strove to master in regard to style and method.

Returning to America, Aronson first came prominently before the public as the director of fashionable concerts in Madison Square Garden, New York; and such was the success of these concerts that he built a concert-hall at Forty-first street and Broadway, opened May 27, 1880. In connection with this enterprise, the now popular "roof-garden" was first introduced as a summer feature.

He subsequently secured capital for a theater to be devoted solely to the elaborate performance of light operas—the Casino, a fine specimen of Moorish architecture, opened Oct. 22, 1882, which was the first permanent home of light opera in America.

Aronson has composed over 150 dances, marches, and various other orchestral pieces, many of which have been successfully performed by Gilmore, Cappa, Eduard Strauss, Theodore Thomas, and other prominent orchestral leaders.

A. J. So.