Charles MacKerras

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By 1941, while still at the conservatory, Mackerras began to get professional performing jobs in Sydney, partly because he was too young to join the military, while older musicians had been called up to go to the war. From 1941 to 1942, Mackerras played the oboe for the J. C. Williamson Company during one of their Gilbert and Sullivan seasons, and he was a rehearsal pianist for the Kirsova ballet company. In 1943, Mackerras joined the ABC Sydney Orchestra, under Malcolm Sargent, as second oboist and at age 19, became principal oboist. On 6 February 1947, Mackerras sailed for England on the RMS Rangitiki intending to pursue conducting. He joined Sadler's Wells Theatre as an orchestral oboist and cor anglais player. He later won a British Council Scholarship, enabling him to study conducting with Václav Talich at the Prague Academy of Music. While there, he formed a strong friendship with Jiří Tancibudek, Principal Oboe of the Czech Philharmonic, who introduced him to the operas of Leoš Janáček, thus commencing Mackerras's lifelong passion for that composer's music.

In August 1947, shortly before the couple set off for Prague, Mackerras married Judy Wilkins, a clarinettist at Sadlers' Wells. They had two daughters, Fiona and Catherine. Fiona died of cancer in September 2006. He was also the uncle of the Australian conductor Alexander Briger and the British-born American conductor Drostan Hall, Music Director of Camerata Chicago.

Returning to England from Prague in 1948, Mackerras rejoined Sadler's Wells as an assistant conductor and began his lifelong association with the Sadler's Wells Opera, now English National Opera, conducting, among others, Janáček, Handel, Gluck, Bach, and Donizetti. In the 1950s, well before the "authenticity" movement had come to general notice, Mackerras focused on the study and practical realization of period performance techniques, culminating in his landmark 1959 recording of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks using the original wind band instrumentation. In his 1965 performance of The Marriage of Figaro, he added the ornamentation in a historically informed style.

Mackerras also strongly championed the music of Janáček outside Czechoslovakia, where Mackerras himself judged his work with Janáček as his single most important legacy to music. In 1951, he conducted the British premiere of Káťa Kabanová. He was also a noted authority on Mozart's operas and those of Sir Arthur Sullivan. His ballet with John Cranko, Pineapple Poll, is an arrangement of Sullivan music with a story based on one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads. The piece premiered in 1951, soon after the expiration of copyright on Sullivan's music, and continues to be a popular light music favourite in English speaking countries. Mackerras later arranged music by Giuseppe Verdi for the ballet The Lady and the Fool. He also arranged a suite from John Ireland's score for the 1946 film The Overlanders, after Ireland's death in 1962.

He was principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra from 1954 to 1956. In 1962, he conducted the S.A. Symphony Orchestra in the Australian première of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos as part of the Adelaide Festival, with Adelaide-born Una Hale in the title role. In 1963, he made his debut at London's Covent Garden conducting Shostakovich's Katerina Izmailova. He directed the Hamburg State Opera from 1965 to 1969 and the English National Opera from 1970 to 1977. In 1972, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in New York conducting Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. Mackerras worked closely with Benjamin Britten for a time until 1958, when, during rehearsals for the first performance of Britten's opera Noye's Fludde, he made comments about Britten liking prepubescent boys' company and Britten subsequently stopped speaking to him.

He conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Birgit Nilsson in the opening concert of the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1973.

Later career

Mackerras had conducted a few Gilbert and Sullivan productions for English National Opera, but his first experience as a guest conductor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was for Trial by Jury, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado during the 1975 D'Oyly Carte centenary season at the Savoy. He conducted Patience at the Proms in 1976, the first full-length Gilbert and Sullivan opera given complete at the Proms. In 1980 he joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Trust and later its Board of Trustees. In the early 1980s he conducted two New Year's Eve broadcasts of Savoy operas for the BBC, and his recordings of eight of the operas were broadcast in 1989 by BBC Radio 2 as part of a complete Gilbert and Sullivan series. He also conducted a centennial performance of Sullivan's The Golden Legend in Leeds and the first staging of a complete Gilbert and Sullivan opera at the Royal Opera House, The Yeomen of the Guard, with Welsh National Opera in 1995. In 1980, also, he became the first non-Briton to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Last Night of the Proms.

In 1982 Mackerras was the first Australian national appointed chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1985. he directed the Welsh National Opera from 1987 to 1992, where his Janáček productions won particular praise. One of the highlights of the 1991 season was the reopening of the Estates Theatre in Prague, scene of the original premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni, in which Mackerras conducted a new production of that opera to mark the bicentenary of Mozart's death. As Conductor Emeritus of Welsh National Opera, his successes included Tristan und Isolde, The Yeomen of the Guard, and La clemenza di Tito (all of which productions were brought to London). He was the principal guest conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) from 1992 to 1995, and held the title of Conductor Laureate with the SCO. He was principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1993 to 1996. During the same period, he was also principal guest conductor of the San Francisco Opera. From 1998 to 2001 he was the music director of the Orchestra of St. Luke's. From 1987, he regularly conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and was appointed Emeritus Conductor in 2007.

In 2004 he became principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. He was also principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. With the Royal Opera, he conducted productions of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Handel's Semele. Mackerras also had a long association with the Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted The Makropulos Case, Káťa Kabanová, Le prophète, Lucia di Lammermoor, Billy Budd, Hansel and Gretel and The Magic Flute.

In August 2008, Mackerras was announced as the new Honorary President of the Edinburgh International Festival Society. He was only the second person to hold this role, after Yehudi Menuhin. As the original part of the largest arts festival in the world, the Edinburgh International Festival featured performances from Mackerras throughout six decades since his first in 1952. Mackerras summarised his strategy for working with an orchestra as follows:

Mackerras was the President of Trinity College of Music, London. He also served as Music Advisor to City Opera of Vancouver, a professional chamber opera company led by conductor Charles Barber. He was also a Patron of Bampton Classical Opera. From 1999 Mackerras was a Patron of the Australian children's cancer charity Redkite.

On 18 December 2008, Mackerras served as the conductor for Alfred Brendel's final concert performance with the Vienna Philharmonic. Mackerras's last performance at the BBC Proms included Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience. His final public performance saw him conduct Così fan tutte at Glyndebourne in the summer of 2010.

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