Gustave Slapoffski (20 August 1862 – 3 August 1951) was an English musician who performed as a violinist and conductor in Britain for two decades, followed by a conducting and film scoring career in Australia over the next three decades. The son of a violinist, Slapoffski graduated the Royal Academy of Music in 1879 and began his own career as a violinist in the British provinces and then at London theatres, where he was eventually first violin in the orchestra at the Opera Comique and then with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. By the mid 1890s, he was assistant conductor for Carl Rosa and, in 1897, became principal conductor. In 1900, together with his second wife, Carl Rosa soprano Lillian Williams, he moved to Australia to conduct opera for George Musgrove. He also conducted tours and performances of such notable performers as Nellie Melba. During the First World War, Slapoffski wrote the scores to accompany the action on screen during silent films and conducted the orchestras. Through the 1920s, he conducted seasons of opera and Gilbert and Sullivan for J. C. Williamson and continued to conduct into the 1930s. Early life He was born in 1862 in London as Joseph Gustavus Slapoffski, the son of Adolph Slapoffski (1827–1902), a Polish-born violinist and musician, who was probably of Jewish descent. Neither of his wives was Jewish. After his first wife Elizabeth Jane Hunter (1832–1857) died in childbirth Adolph married her sister, Anne née Hunter (1837–1926), who was Gustave Slapoffski's mother. Anne, like her sister, was born in Sydney, Australia, where her father, British Army major William Hunter, was the military secretary to Sir Richard Bourke, Governor of New South Wales. Baptised on 2 October 1875 at All Souls Church in Marylebone, London, Slapoffski grew up in Oxford, where he attended Christ Church Cathedral School. He was an amateur boxer and learned to play the violin with such success that in 1876 Prince Leopold, the youngest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, arranged for his admission to the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he received tuition in violin from the French violinist Prosper Sainton and studied composition under Arthur Sullivan. Later in life, Slapoffski would claim that he had some association with the original productions of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer (1876) and H.M.S. Pinafore (1878). Career Early years in Britain On graduating from the Royal Academy in 1879