Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras (; (17 November 1925 – 14 July 2010) was an American-born Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera (and its predecessor) and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon.

Early life and education

Mackerras was born in Schenectady, New York, to Australian parents, Alan Mackerras and Catherine MacLaurin. His father was an electrical engineer and a Quaker. In 1928, when Charles was aged two, the family returned to Sydney. They initially lived in the suburb of Rose Bay, and in 1933 they moved to the then semi-rural suburb of Turramurra. Mackerras was the eldest of seven children. His siblings were Alastair (1928–99), Neil (1930–87), Joan (1934–2020), Elisabeth (b. 1937) and twins Malcolm and Colin (b. 1939). They are descendants of the pioneer Australian-Jewish composer and musician Isaac Nathan. On 1947, Mackerras sailed for England on the RMS Rangitiki

In August 1947, shortly before the couple set off for Prague, Mackerras married Judy Wilkins, a clarinettist at Sadlers' Wells. 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 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.

In 1962, he conducted the South Australian Symphony Orchestra in the Australian première of Richard 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 Dmitri 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 the company of prepubescent boys, and Britten subsequently stopped speaking to him.

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 in its entirety 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. 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 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 was conducting Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.

Death

Mackerras died in London on 14 July 2010 at the age of 84, having suffered from cancer. Throughout his final illness, he had continued to conduct, and had been scheduled to direct two of the BBC Proms on and 2010. He was also 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. The director of the BBC Proms, Roger Wright, announced that a Prom would be dedicated to Mackerras's memory. His funeral was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden on 23 July 2010.

Recordings

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. In 1952, he conducted his first recording of his own Pineapple Poll ballet, which was issued on twelve sides, and subsequently transferred to LP. He later conducted two more complete recordings of the ballet. He did not always restrict himself to the classical repertoire. For example, on 1955 he recorded Albert Arlen's song Clancy of the Overflow (to Banjo Paterson's poem) with Peter Dawson and the London Symphony Orchestra.

A smaller UK record company, Pye Records, asked Mackerras to record Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. 'We had to do that in the middle of the night, in order to get our twenty-six oboes together.' For Telarc in the 1990s, with Welsh National Opera's chorus and orchestra, he also conducted Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado and The Yeomen of the Guard. His final recording was Suk's Asrael Symphony, which was the composer's response to the deaths in quick succession of his father-in-law Dvořák and his wife. It was recorded not long after the death of Mackerras's own daughter Fiona.

Honours

Charles Mackerras was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1974 New Year Honours, and was knighted in the 1979 New Year Honours. In 1978, he was presented with the Janáček Medal for services to Czech music, on stage at the Coliseum Theatre, by the Czechoslovak ambassador. In 1990, he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Hull. In 1996, he received the Medal of Merit from the Czech Republic, and, in 1997 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for services to music and Australian music. In 2000, he was awarded the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award presented jointly by the Prague Society for International Cooperation and Global Panel Foundation. In 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal, created to mark the centenary of the Federation of Australia. In 2003 he was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the Queen's Birthday Honours. In 2005, he was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, and he was also the first recipient of the Queen's Medal for Music, announced by the Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall before a Proms performance of H.M.S. Pinafore. He was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Northern College of Music in 1999.

Legacy

The Music Room at the Bodleian's Weston Library at Oxford University was named after Mackerras when it opened in 2015.

References

Notes

Sources

  • Priest, Joan (1986). Gentlemen and Scholars: A Biography of the Mackerras Family. Brisbane: Boolarong Publications. .
  • Charles Mackerras at the Bach Cantatas Website
  • Charles Mackerras profile and interview at ClassicsToday.com
  • Charles Mackerras biography and interview at the Philharmonia Orchestra
  • Interview with Charles Mackerras at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
  • Profile focusing on Mackerras's Sullivan connections
  • Charles Mackerras website
  • Recent profile of Mackerras
  • Photos of Mackerras throughout his life
  • Mackerras and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the 'Sydney Opera House Opening Concert' in 1973
  • Interview with Charles Mackerras, 6 November 1986