Edward Downes:FOR MOST of his career, Edward Downes was the leading conductor of Verdi in Britain and an expert on the composer's scores and their many editions. At the age of 85, he has died in an assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland, along with his wife, Joan (74).
Downes promulgated his skills in a host of Verdi performances at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which showed him wholly in sympathy with the energy, romantic fervour and rhythmic buoyancy that lie at the heart of the operas.
But Downes was far from being a specialist: he was a musical polymath with wideranging interests.
Another of his loves was the Russian repertory, which he frequently conducted in his early days at Covent Garden. He adored Richard Strauss, too, and during his time at Covent Garden conducted revivals of Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra and Salome. He also conducted Wagner's Ring on several occasions, as well as the premieres of many new scores.
Downes was born in Birmingham. He left school at 14, sent out by his father to earn his living in a local gas store.
Music was his passion though: he had studied violin and piano as a boy and spent his free time reading all the scores he could lay his hands on. In 1941, he sent some compositions to Victor Hely-Hutchinson, music professor at Birmingham University, and won a scholarship to study music there.
With little or no money, he left home for good, scraped together a living in odd wartime jobs - such as coal-heaving - and attended lectures during the week. Already suffering from the poor eyesight that was to afflict him all his life, he was declared unfit for national service.
On graduating in 1944, he went to the Royal College of Music, studying composition with Vaughan Williams and RO Morris, and the horn. As a freelance horn-player, he took part in the opening postwar performance, Sleeping Beauty, at Covent Garden in 1946, and the premiere of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes at Sadler's Wells in 1945.
However conducting was what he wanted to do, and he went to study with Hermann Scherchen, foremost teacher of his day, in Zurich, staying on as his assistant for 18 months. Back in Britain, Downes joined the Carl Rosa Opera as coach in 1950, remaining until 1952, when he began his long and fruitful association with Covent Garden, initially as a repetiteur. One of his first jobs was to prompt Maria Callas in Bellini's Norma.
His first conducting assignment was with the company on tour in what is now Zimbabwe: Puccini's La Boheme, in 1953. Later that year, he made his first home appearance, with Carmen.
In 1957 Rafael Kubelik, then music director, sent his apprentice to a specialist who saved Downes's sight after he had suffered a haemorrhage.
Gradually Downes came out from under his senior's influence and established himself in his own right as a conductor. So he regretted all the more that Colin Davis was made music director over his head in 1970 - although he came back every season as a guest.
In 1972, he took charge of the fledgling Australian Opera, where he remained until 1976. In 1980 he began a satisfying period as principal conductor of the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, which from 1982 was known as the BBC Philharmonic. During his years there, he increased the orchestra's standing enormously.
In 1991, he returned to Covent Garden as associate music director. It was then, in conjunction with the general director, Jeremy Isaacs, that the idea of a Verdi festival was announced.
Only financial stringencies and the need to close the opera house for rebuilding prevented the vast project - performing all of Verdi's operas - from being completed. Downes did manage to introduce, under his own baton or that of others, most of the major works and many of the minor ones by the Italian master.
On the podium, Downes was thoroughly professional. A man of few gestures, he achieved his results through intensive rehearsal, essential for a man whose sight of a score was minimal, and concentrated on essentials, leaving the flamboyancy to others.
Away from the podium, Downes was, until his failing sight prevented it, a voracious reader. He was also an inveterate bon vivant and a racy conversationalist, always ready with the latest opera gossip and a fund of knowledgeable operatic lore.
Appointed a CBE in 1986 and knighted in 1991, Downes suffered increasingly from ill-health, but was able to celebrate his 80th birthday in 2004 by conducting the BBC Philharmonic in Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony. The following year he bade farewell to Covent Garden with 10 performances of Rigoletto, having conducted more than 950 times for the company in 49 operas.
He was married to Joan, a former dancer, choreographer and television producer who became his devoted personal assistant for 54 years. In later years, he had become almost blind and increasingly deaf and she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Their family announced that the couple "decided to end their own lives rather than continue to struggle with serious health problems". Together they travelled to a clinic run by the assisted suicide group Dignitas in Zurich, and took their own lives.
A son, Caractacus, and a daughter, Boudicca, survive them.
Edward Thomas Downes: born June 17th, 1924; died July 10th, 2009