Edward Downes

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Edward Downes (1966)

Sir Edward Downes (born June 17, 1924 in Birmingham , † July 10, 2009 in Zurich ) was a British conductor.

Although he had to drop out of school at the age of 15 for lack of money, he was able to study English and music at Birmingham University thanks to a scholarship . At the Royal College of Music , he took a postgraduate degree. He played English horn and was an orchestral musician in operas in the mid-1940s. With a Carnegie scholarship, he was able to learn to conduct with Hermann Scherchen , then chief conductor of the studio orchestra at Schweizer Rundfunk. From 1952 he conducted regularly at the Royal Opera House , where he performed 25 of the 28 operas composed by Giuseppe Verdi . When the opera Katerina Ismailowa was performed in 1963, there was intensive collaboration with its composer Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Shostakowitsch .

From 1970 he was a conductor at the Australian Opera. The Sydney Opera House opened with a performance of Prokofiev's opera War and Peace , conducted by him . Later he was conductor of the Dutch Radio Orchestra, from 1980 to 1991 he was chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic . In 1986 he was accepted as Commander in the Order of the British Empire and in 1991 knighted as a Knight Bachelor ("Sir"). He finished his work at the Royal Opera House in 2005.

After his first marriage was divorced, he married the dancer and choreographer Joan Weston (* 1934 or 1935; † July 10, 2009) with whom he had two children in the mid-1950s. When she became terminally ill with cancer and he himself suffered from progressive hearing loss, they both passed away with the help of the Swiss euthanasia organization Dignitas .

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personal data
SURNAME Downes, Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British conductor
DATE OF BIRTH June 17, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Birmingham
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 2009
Place of death Zurich