Edward Downes

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

Although he had to cancel at the age of 15 years for lack of money to go to school, he was able to study English and music thanks to a scholarship at Birmingham University. At the Royal College of Music, he took a postgraduate course. He played English Horn and arrived mid-1940s in opera performances as an orchestral musician to use. With a Carnegie scholarship he could bei Hermann Scherchen, then chief conductor of the orchestra at the Swiss Broadcasting Studio, learn conducting. He conducted from 1952 regularly at the Royal Opera House, where he performed, among others, 25 of the 28 composed by Giuseppe Verdi operas. In the performance of the opera Katerina Ismailova 1963, an intensive co-operation with the composer Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich.

From 1970 he was conductor at the Australian Opera. The Sydney Opera House was opened opera War and Peace with a performance of Prokofiev conducted by him. Later, he was conductor of the Netherlands Radio Orchestra, from 1980 to 1991 he was chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1991 he was knighted. His work at the Royal Opera House, he finished in 2005.

After his first marriage had been divorced, he married the mid-1950s, the dancer and choreographer Joan Weston ( born 1934 or 1935 † 10 July 2009), with whom he had two children. When these terminally ill with cancer and he himself suffered the progressive loss of his hearing, both secreted with the help of the Swiss euthanasia organization Dignitas out of life.