Henry Warwick Braithwaite was a New Zealand-born orchestral conductor.
13 Facts About Warwick Braithwaite
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Warwick Braithwaite worked mostly in Great Britain and was especially known for his work in opera.
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Warwick Braithwaite's father was later mayor of Dunedin between 1905 and 1906.
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Warwick Braithwaite joined the O'Mara Opera Company as chorus master, a touring opera company run by the Irish tenor Joseph O'Mara, and with them made his debut as a conductor with Auber's Fra Diavolo in 1919.
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Warwick Braithwaite performed not only opera, but ballet and theatre as well: among its stars were Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann, Joan Cross, Constant Lambert.
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Warwick Braithwaite conducted Wagner's Mastersingers and Lohengrin Beethoven's Fidelio, the Mozart operas, Verdi's Don Carlos and a highly successful Falstaff, the Puccini operas, and Ethel Smythe's The Wreckers.
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Warwick Braithwaite conducted Puccini's Tosca at Sadler's Wells on the afternoon of 7 September 1940.
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Warwick Braithwaite watched the raid from the roof of the theatre.
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Warwick Braithwaite conducted operas with some of the period's greatest singers, among them Boris Christoff in Boris Godunov, and Victoria de los Angeles in her debut as Puccini's Mimi.
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Warwick Braithwaite toured Australia in 1947 as a guest conductor, with concerts in all of the mainland capital cities.
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Warwick Braithwaite was a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.
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Warwick Braithwaite married first Phyllis Greatrex in 1925, with whom he had a daughter, Barbara, a nurse.
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Warwick Braithwaite died in London on 19 January 1971, and was buried at Levington in Suffolk in the same grave as his three-year-old grandson Mark who had died the same year.