Returning to Philadelphia, he studied piano and composition under Olga Samaroff and at her suggestion audited a conducting class at Tanglewood one  summtr. At • 18, ‘Mr.• Schippers was one of six finalists out of 40 entrants in a Philadelphia Orchestra conducting competition and as a result had a chance to lead that orchestra briefly.  At this point, as Mr. Schippers recalled it later, his father, who had doubts about music as a career for his son, called him back to Kalamazoo. The aspiring musician showed his father a letter offering him a job as organist in the Village Presbyterian Church in New York. The job paid $10 a week, but Mr, Schippers told his father that it paid $5,000 a year, and returned to New York, where he was soon playing the piano for a company of equally youthful hopefuls called the Lemonade Opera, which performed in the basement of the same church in Greenwich Village. One day the conductor quit, and Mr. Schippers took his place. One of the Lemonade Opera's singers went to audition for Mr. Menotti, who was then casting his first full‐length opera, “The Consul,” and Mr. Schippers went along to play the piano for her. Mr. Menotti was more impressed with the pianist than with the singer, and hired him to coach the singers for “The Consul.”  Luck once again tapped Mr. Schippers on the shoulder when shortly before the opera's New York premiere, in 1950, the regular conductor fell ill and the young conductor was asked to take his place. “If that isn't luck, what is?” Mr. Schippers later remarked.  After conducting for three months in New York, Mr. Schippers was sent to Europe by Mr. Menotti to record the score for a film of “The Medium.” After service in the Army, with a tour of duty in Germany, he returned to the United States, where he found himself in demand. He led the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philharmonic and became a steady conductor at the New York City Opera. When he was chosen to conduct the premiere of Aaron Copland's “The Ter'er Land” there, Mr. Schippers was just 24 years old.  The association with Mr. Menotti developed into one of the strongest links in his career. At 22, he conducted the first televised performance of “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” which was destined to become a Christmastime classic, and he soon became known as an authoritative interpreter of many Menotti  The Menotti connection, which resulted is their founding of the Spoleto Festival in 1958, continued until 1976, when composer and conductor fell out. Mr. Menotti told an Italian newspaper that Mr. Schippers had become too costly a performer for the festival to afford, a “Marron glace,” bather than a menu staple. Mr. Schippers retorted in another newspaper that big names had become irksome to Mr. Menotti, and that there was nothing more to say but goodbye.  His many engagements with the New York Philharmoic included alternating with Leonard Bernstein on the podium during a visit of the orchestra to the Soviet Union. He made his debut at La Scala in 1954 and returned often to the Milan cpera house. It was there in 1962 that he conducted the world premiere of Falla's cantata “Atlnntida.” His debut at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany came in 1964, in Wieland Wagner's controversial new production of “Die Meistersinger.”  Mr. Schippers became a Metropolitan Opera regular after his debut there in 1955, and his assignments outside the standard repertory included the world premiere of Menotti's “The Last Savage,” during the 1963‐64 season. He was also entrusted with the opening production of the Metropolitan Opera House on Sept. 16, 1966: Samuel Barber's “Antony and Cleopatra,” one of the unqualified disasters in the company's history. The trouble was generally attributed to Franco Zeffirelli's staging. of it. At the Metropolitan, Mr. Schippers held the record of having conducted more opening nights than anyone in the last 40 years.  During a 1960 Metropolitan performance of “Forza del Destino” that Mr. Sohippers conducted, the baritone Leonard Warren fell dead on the stage.  One of Mr. Schippers's greatest Metropolitan triumphs came in 1974, when he conducted a new production of “Boris Godunov” in Mussongsky's original version, a first for the company.  In addition to his Cincinnati Symphony post, Mr. Schippers had been engaged as music director of the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, and was to have conducted his first concerts with it last October. Last month the Cincinnati orchestra gave Mr. Schippers the title of Conductor Laureate.  He is survived by his parents, Mr. and !Mrs. Peter Schippers of Richland, Mich.; a sister, Mrs. John Gideon of Kalamazoo, and a brother, Henry Schippers of KalaI mazoo.  We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.  A version of this archives appears in print on December 17, 1977, on page 27 of the New York edition with the headline: Thomas Schippers Is Dead at 47; Conductor of Opera, Symphony. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Thomas Schippers, conductor laureate of Cincinnati Symphony Orch, dies in NYC of lung cancer at age 47; career revd; illus (M)