After working briefly in sales, he landed a position conducting at the
Stadttheater Aachen in 1893. From 1899 to 1906, he conducted at the
Neues Deutsches Theater in
Prague before moving to the
Königliches Opernhaus in Berlin. In 1913, he was promoted to General Music Director. Between 1923 and 1926, he took various positions at opera houses in Berlin and
Vienna, including the
Deutsches Opernhaus, the
Volksoper Berlin and the
Vienna Volksoper. In 1926, he returned to the Staatsoper unter den Linden, where he remained until
Adolf Hitler's antisemitic policies forced him in 1937 into exile in
Riga, the capital of
Latvia, where he conducted the
Latvian National Opera and Ballet Theatre. With an eye to Blech's substantial German and foreign reputation,
Hermann Göring, then Hitler's second in command, issued an order to Major Karl Heise, head of the
Schutzpolizei in
German-occupied Riga in September 1941, to issue an exit visa to Blech for neutral Sweden, making him the only Jewish survivor in Riga to escape as a result of such high-level intervention. During and after World War II, Blech conducted at the
Stockholm Royal Opera. In 1949, he returned to Berlin to conduct at the
Städtische Oper (Civic Opera), where he worked until 1953. One of his pupils, conductor
Herbert Sandberg, married his daughter Luise (Lisel) (1913–2006). Blech made recordings of operatic and orchestral music for the
Deutsche Grammophon,
His Master's Voice,
Ultraphon/Telefunken,
Decca, and Elite record labels. ==Compositions==