57 Facts About Charles Mackerras

Charles Mackerras was an authority on the operas of Janacek and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Charles Mackerras was long associated with the English National Opera and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Charles Mackerras specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon.

Charles Mackerras was born in Schenectady, New York, to Australian parents, Alan Charles Mackerras and Catherine MacLaurin.

Charles Mackerras's father was an electrical engineer and a Quaker.

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In 1928, when Charles Mackerras was aged two, the family returned to Sydney, Australia.

Charles Mackerras studied violin at the age of seven and later the flute.

Charles Mackerras was setting poems to music at eight and wrote a piano concerto when he was 12.

At age 16, Charles Mackerras studied oboe, piano and composition at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music.

Charles Mackerras earned additional income from writing orchestral scores from recordings.

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, Charles Mackerras joined the ABC Sydney Orchestra, under Malcolm Sargent, as second oboist and at age 19, became principal oboist.

On 1947, Charles Mackerras sailed for England on the RMS Rangitiki intending to pursue conducting.

Charles Mackerras joined Sadler's Wells Theatre as an orchestral oboist and cor anglais player.

Charles Mackerras later won a British Council Scholarship, enabling him to study conducting with Vaclav Talich at the Prague Academy of Music.

Charles Mackerras was the uncle of the Australian conductor Alexander Briger and the British-born American conductor Drostan Hall, Music Director of Camerata Chicago.

Charles Mackerras strongly championed the music of Janacek outside Czechoslovakia, where Charles Mackerras himself judged his work with Janacek as his single most important legacy to music.

Charles Mackerras was a noted authority on Mozart's operas and those of Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Charles Mackerras's 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.

Charles Mackerras later arranged music by Giuseppe Verdi for the ballet The Lady and the Fool.

Charles Mackerras arranged a suite from John Ireland's score for the 1946 film The Overlanders, after Ireland's death in 1962.

Charles Mackerras was principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra from 1954 to 1956.

Charles Mackerras directed the Hamburg State Opera from 1965 to 1969 and the English National Opera from 1970 to 1977.

Charles 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.

Charles 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.

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Charles Mackerras conducted Patience at the Proms in 1976, the first full-length Gilbert and Sullivan opera given complete at the Proms.

Charles Mackerras 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 1982 Charles Mackerras was the first Australian national appointed chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1985.

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 Charles Mackerras conducted a new production of that opera to mark the bicentenary of Mozart's death.

Charles Mackerras was the principal guest conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 1992 to 1995, and held the title of Conductor Laureate with the SCO.

Charles Mackerras was principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1993 to 1996.

Charles Mackerras was principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.

Charles Mackerras had a long association with the Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted The Makropulos Case, Kata Kabanova, Le prophete, Lucia di Lammermoor, Billy Budd, Hansel and Gretel and The Magic Flute.

Charles Mackerras was only the second person to hold this role, after Yehudi Menuhin.

Charles Mackerras summarised his strategy for working with an orchestra as follows:.

Charles Mackerras was the President of Trinity College of Music, London.

Charles Mackerras served as Music Advisor to City Opera of Vancouver, a professional chamber opera company led by conductor Charles Barber.

From 1999 Charles Mackerras was a Patron of the Australian children's cancer charity Redkite.

On 18 December 2008, Charles Mackerras served as the conductor for Alfred Brendel's final concert performance with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Charles Mackerras died in London on 14 July 2010 at the age of 84, having suffered from cancer.

Charles Mackerras was due to conduct the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart's Idomeneo at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2010, which would have been his 56th appearance at the festival.

Wright paid tribute to Mackerras, saying "Sir Charles was a great conductor and his loss will be deeply felt by musicians and audiences alike", while Rory Jeffes of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra said that Australia had "lost a living treasure".

Charles Mackerras was survived by his wife, Judy, and their daughter, Catherine.

Charles Mackerras's funeral was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden on 23 July 2010.

Charles Mackerras made his earliest records for EMI, in the final days of 78 rpm records, and he continued recording well into the era of compact discs in the multi-channel Super Audio CD format.

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Charles Mackerras later conducted two more complete recordings of the ballet.

Charles Mackerras did not always restrict himself to the classical repertoire.

Charles Mackerras followed that up with Handel's Saul and Israel in Egypt for DG.

Charles Mackerras recorded the first complete Roberto Devereux with Beverly Sills.

Charles Mackerras recorded three Mahler symphonies and all of the symphonies of Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven.

Sullivan's manuscript and most of the orchestra parts were destroyed in a fire, and more than three decades after that single BBC performance, in collaboration with David Mackie, Charles Mackerras reconstructed the concerto, conducting its first performance with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall, London, in April 1986, and a recording for EMI shortly afterwards.

Charles Mackerras's discography includes a recording of Britten's Gloriana, which won Gramophone magazine's "Best Opera Recording" in 1994.

In 1997, Charles Mackerras recorded Le delizie dell'amor, with the soprano Andrea Rost, for Sony Classical.

Charles Mackerras recorded Dvorak's Rusalka and Slavonic Dances, Josef Suk's A Summer Tale, Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos.

Charles Mackerras's final recording was Suk's Asrael Symphony, which was the composer's response to the deaths of his father-in-law Dvorak and wife in quick succession.

Charles Mackerras was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1974 New Year Honours, and was knighted in the 1979 New Year Honours.

Charles Mackerras was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Northern College of Music in 1999.