Early years Rankl was born in
Gaaden, near Vienna, the fourteenth child of a peasant couple. He was educated in Vienna, and from 1918 studied composition there with
Arnold Schoenberg and later with
Anton Webern. Many years later, Rankl was invited by the composer to complete Schoenberg's oratorio
Die Jakobsleiter but he declined the invitation. Rankl's first professional post was as chorus master and répétiteur under
Felix Weingartner at the
Volksoper in Vienna in 1919, where he later became an assistant conductor. In 1923 he married Adele Jahoda (1903–1963). At the Kroll, Rankl strongly supported Klemperer's policy of promoting new music and radical productions. He moved back to Austria to head the opera at
Graz in 1933, In wartime Britain Rankl was unable to obtain a permit to work as a conductor until 1944, and he devoted much of his time to composition. His widow later recalled that Rankl also played the viola in a string quartet during this period. When he was eventually given the necessary work permit to resume his conducting career, Rankl conducted the
Liverpool Philharmonic, and
London Philharmonic Orchestras. He made a favourable impression;
The Times praised his "boundless energy … clear-cut performance and with a strong feeling for the shapely line of a melody." In 1944, the British government introduced a modest measure of state subsidy for the arts, and as part of this it established a Covent Garden Trust to present opera and ballet at the Royal Opera House. Webster successfully negotiated with
Ninette de Valois to get her
Sadler's Wells Ballet company to move its base to Covent Garden, but he had to build up an opera company from scratch. He initially approached famous conductors including
Bruno Walter and
Eugene Goossens, but found them unwilling to accommodate themselves to the new brief of the Covent Garden opera company: to present opera in English, with a permanent company, all year round on a very tight budget. Rankl was on the verge of going to Australia in response to an invitation from the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation to conduct a 13-week season of 20 concerts. He and the corporation were unable to agree terms, and in April 1946, he accepted the Covent Garden post. His appointment immediately caused controversy in musical circles. To those who hankered after the glamour of the pre-war seasons he was a minor figure among international maestros. Among those outraged by Rankl's appointment was
Sir Thomas Beecham, who had been in control of Covent Garden for much of the period from 1910 to 1939, and was furious at being excluded under the new regime. He publicly stated that the appointment of an alien, especially one bearing a German name was the "mystery of mysteries", and called the Covent Garden trustees a "hapless set of ignoramuses and nitwits". Webster, however, realised that what the new Covent Garden company needed at this stage in its existence was not a star conductor but one of those who, in the words of the critic
Desmond Shawe-Taylor "know the whole complex business of opera inside out, and retain in their blood the pre-war standards of a good continental opera house." A biographer of Webster has written that under Rankl, "amazing progress" was made. He assembled and trained an orchestra and a chorus. He recruited and trained musical assistants. Having recruited and trained a largely British company of singers, Rankl, with Webster's strong support, persuaded international singers including
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,
Ljuba Welitsch,
Hans Hotter and
Paolo Silveri to appear with the company, singing in English. The company performed a wide repertory of German, Italian, Russian and English opera. It made its debut in January 1947 with
Carmen, in a performance greeted by
The Times as "worthy of the stage on which it appeared ... It revealed in Mr. Karl Rankl a musical director who knew how to conduct opera." The company, headed by
Edith Coates and including
Dennis Noble,
Grahame Clifford,
David Franklin and
Constance Shacklock, was warmly praised. Rankl tackled the Italian repertoire, and new English works, winning praise for his
Rigoletto, though with
Peter Grimes he was compared to his disadvantage with the original conductor,
Reginald Goodall. A production of
The Masteringers with Hotter as Sachs was judged "a further stage in the consolidation of the Covent Garden company". Despite the good notices for his early seasons, Rankl had to cope with a vociferous public campaign by Beecham against the very idea of establishing a company of British artists; Beecham maintained that the British could not sing opera, and had produced only half a dozen first rate operatic artists in the past 60 years. In the next three years, Rankl built the company up, reluctantly casting foreign stars when no suitable British singer could be found, and resisting attempts by Webster to invite eminent guest conductors. When Webster and the Covent Garden board insisted, Rankl took it badly that star conductors such as
Erich Kleiber,
Clemens Krauss and Beecham were brought into "his" opera house. In a biographical article in the
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the critic
Frank Howes wrote of Rankl: "By 1951 he had made the Covent Garden Company a going concern, but had also revealed, notably in his 1950 performances of the Ring, his limitations as a conductor – he was considered difficult with singers, orchestras and producers." Critics and operagoers did not fail to notice the difference in standards between performances under Rankl and under the guests. Rankl resigned in May 1951, and conducted for the last time at the Royal Opera House on 30 June. The work was
Tristan und Isolde with
Kirsten Flagstad; as it was announced in advance that this would be her last appearance in the role of Isolde and her farewell performance at Covent Garden, the fact that it was also Rankl's farewell received little attention. He was never invited to conduct there again, and did not set foot in the building for another 14 years, until 1965 for the first night of
Moses und Aron by his old teacher, Schoenberg; the conductor then was
Georg Solti. After the end of the 1951 London season, Rankl conducted the Covent Garden company on tour; his final performance with the company was
Der Rosenkavalier in
Liverpool on 27 July 1951.
Later years In 1952, Rankl was appointed conductor of the
Scottish National Orchestra, in succession to
Walter Susskind. He held the post for five years, and gained good notices. In 1953,
Neville Cardus wrote that Rankl and his orchestra held their own even when compared against
Wilhelm Furtwängler and the
Vienna Philharmonic, when both orchestras played at that year's
Edinburgh Festival. Rankl was praised for enterprising programming, presenting the then-unknown early work of Schoenberg
Gurrelieder at the 1954 Edinburgh Festival, and
Mahler's
Fifth Symphony, also then a rarity, at the same festival. Cardus also praised Rankl's conducting of
Bruckner as "grand and comprehensive … of rare quality". In December 1957, Rankl was appointed musical director of the
Elizabethan Trust Opera Company in Australia. In his first season, he conducted
Carmen,
Peter Grimes,
Fidelio,
Lohengrin and
The Barber of Seville. He conducted the company at the inaugural
Adelaide Festival in 1960, in
Richard Strauss's
Salome and
Puccini's
Il trittico. Towards the end of his life, Rankl retired to St. Gilgen, near Salzburg in Austria. He died there at the age of 69. == Compositions and recordings ==