 A member of the music staff at the Metropolitan Opera since 1949, Taussig was the company's associate conductor at the time of his death.Taussig was a 1928 graduate of the Music Academy in Vienna, where he studied composition with Franz Schmidt and conducting with Robert Heger.The political climate of Europe in the late 1930s caused Taussig to emigrate to the United States (along with his mother and sister, the acclaimed mathematician Herta Freitag), by way of Havana (where he conducted the Havana Philharmonic).