and Sir Thomas Beecham, and won high praise for his own conducting. After a 1931 Parsifal, one reviewer wrote, "Few conductors have the courage to take this opera slowly enough. Professor Knappertsbusch, however, gave a thoroughly well-balanced interpretation … full of life, full of philosophy and full of charm". The same reviewer observed that Knappertsbusch's experience at Bayreuth before the war had given him an advantage over rival conductors such as Arturo Toscanini and Wilhelm Furtwängler. He was musically conservative, but conducted the premieres of seven operas during his time at Munich: Don Gil von den grünen Hosen by Walter Braunfels, Das Himmelskleid by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Samuel Pepys by Albert Coates, Die geliebte Stimme by Jaromír Weinberger, Lucedia by Vittorio Giannini, and Das Herz by Hans Pfitzner. A visiting English conductor, Adrian Boult, found Knappertsbusch's performances of Mozart lacking in rhythmic precision, but praised his conducting of Wagner, remarking that even Arthur Nikisch could not have produced a more overwhelming performance of Tristan und Isolde. 1936 to 1945 In 1936 the Nazis, who had been in power in Germany since 1933, revoked Knappertsbusch's lifetime contract at the State Opera. There were evidently several reasons for this: he refused to join the Nazi Party and was frequently rude about the régime; budgetary constraints meant little to him; and Adolf Hitler, who had strong ideas about music, did not like his slow tempi, calling him "that military bandleader". During the next nine years, Knappertsbusch worked mostly in Austria conducting at the Staatsoper and the Salzburg Festival, and continuing a long association with the Vienna Philharmonic. He guest-conducted in Budapest, and at Covent Garden, London. He was allowed to go on conducting under Nazi rule, although Munich remained closed to him. In Vienna, on 30 June 1944, he conducted the last performance at the old Staatsoper, which was destroyed by bombing hours later. The president of the Vienna Philharmonic recalled: Post-war After the war there was a widespread desire in Munich for Knappertsbusch's return, but like the other leading musicians who had worked under the Nazi régime he was subject to a process of denazification, and the occupying American forces appointed Georg Solti as general music director of the State Opera. Solti, a young Jewish musician who had been in exile in Switzerland during the war, later recalled: After this Knappertsbusch mostly freelanced. He declined an invitation to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera