The seminal composer of 20th century film music and two-time Oscar winner Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in Brno in 1897. Considered a wunderkind, he grew up in Vienna and by the age of 13 was premiering his first ballet at the Wiener Hofoper. His first two operas, Der Ring des Polykrates and Violanta, would then soon be premiered in Munich by Bruno Walter, in 1916. A few years later, around the time of the 1920 premiere of Die tote Stadt, Giacomo Puccini dubbed the then 23-year-old Korngold the “greatest hope of German music”.