Golovsky studied at the
Moscow Conservatory under
Karl Kipp. In the
Bolshevik era, he and his mother travelled to
Europe, leaving the
Soviet Union. He studied with
Artur Schnabel in Berlin beginning in 1924 and then with
Ernő Dohnányi in
Budapest beginning in 1924. He gained fluency in several languages, a gift that served him well as a translator of opera in his later career. In 1930, he moved to
Philadelphia, where his mother taught at the
Curtis Institute of Music, and where he became a conducting student of
Fritz Reiner and later Reiner's assistant. It was under Reiner that his love and training in opera began. According to U.S. immigration records, he was inspected and detained at
Ellis Island twice: once in October 1925 for an irregularity with his visa and once in late July 1932 on suspicion that he might be an illegally contracted labourer; both situations were rather quickly resolved and he was permitted to continue by rail to Pennsylvania. Goldovsky moved to Cleveland in 1936 to become assistant to
Artur Rodziński, music director of the
Cleveland Orchestra. Then he moved again to
Boston in 1942, where he became director of the opera department at the
New England Conservatory of Music. The same year, he was named director of the opera department at the
Tanglewood Music Center in the
Berkshires by
Serge Koussevitsky, a position he held through 1962. Koussevitsky had become well acquainted with the Goldovsky family in Russia long before their immigration to the US.
Sarah Caldwell became Goldovsky's assistant at Tanglewood and in Boston, and worked with him for several years. In January 1945, Goldovsky began the
New England Opera Theater (later known as the "Goldovsky Opera Theater") under the sponsorship of the New England Conservatory. The operation became independent and moved to New York in the 1950s and enjoyed four decades of touring during which young singers were trained for operatic careers. Many of them went on to sing at the
Metropolitan Opera and other leading houses. He disbanded the company upon his retirement in 1985. He also joined the faculty of the Southwestern Opera Institute in the mid-1970s and worked there for ten years. During this institute, he worked with dozens of students from universities in the United States at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana, Lafayette). Invited by his former student Beaman Griffin, he was joined by his friends Richard Crittenden and Arthur Schoep. Scenes were all performed in English so singers would learn to "react as well as act." During the
New York Metropolitan Opera's tour visit to Boston in around 1946, Goldovsky participated in a promotional opera quiz event. His encyclopedic knowledge led
Texaco to offer him a weekend job as master of ceremonies covering the intermission periods of the Texaco-sponsored
Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. The sponsor agreed to pay for weekly travel to New York. He quickly became known across the United States for his Saturday radio commentary and earned the nickname of "Mr. Opera." In 1953 he wrote
Accents on Opera, a series of essays, sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and published in New York by Farrar, Straus & Young. In 1954 he received a
Peabody Award for Outstanding Contribution to Radio Music. He also wrote a guide for sopranos who "often receive very little instruction when staging arias at small companies" entitled "Bringing Soprano Arias to Life." His most popular book,
My Road to Opera, is an anecdote-filled autobiography. In the late 1970s, he began again to teach at the Curtis Institute, from where he retired in 1985. He left an extensive collection of Mozart memorabilia to the Curtis Institute upon his death. He has been credited in several recordings, including a
Boston Symphony Orchestra recording of
Wagner's "Lohengrin", conducted by
Erich Leinsdorf. Famous associates include
Mario Lanza,
Leonard Bernstein and
Mary Beth Peil. He died in
Brookline, Massachusetts, aged 92, in 2001. =="Goldovsky error"==