Sir Jeffrey Tate
Principal conductor of the ROH who overcame disability and gained international recognition
SIR JEFFREY TATE, who has died aged 74, was a qualified doctor who overcame severe disability and a lack of formal musical training to become principal conductor of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; he was also the first principal conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra, with whom he produced an outstanding series of concerts and recordings featuring the music of Mozart among others.
Tate suffered from congenital spina bifida and kyphoscoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine. Watching him make his way to the podium was a lesson in determination as he lurched from side to side, his left leg splayed sideways and his handsome head sunk into his hunched shoulders; a big heave and he was up on his stool in front of the orchestra. Generally he had the manoeuvre down to a fine art, although on one occasion in Cologne he misjudged his leap and landed among the viola section.
Other than the stool, from which Tate occasionally rose to his feet as the music reached a climax, there was little difference in his performance from any other conductor. His attention to detail was second to none and in the 1980s and early 1990s he seemed to be a permanent fixture in British concert halls and recording studios. Such was his reputation abroad that after one performance of Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, Leonard Bernstein, who had been in the audience, came to his dressing room and, on learning that not only had Tate never conducted the opera before but also had not had a rehearsal, fell to his knees crying: “Maestro!”
For many years Tate was employed by Covent Garden as répétiteur, helping to prepare singers in the early stages of rehearsal. On one occasion Sir John Tooley, director of the Royal Opera, dispatched him to Paris in an attempt to help Maria Callas recover her lost vocal confidence, but it was in vain, as Tate recalled. “Her view of the world was totally depressing,” he said. “I had the terrible feeling that here was a woman who had gone beyond the edge of possibility.”
Later, as his British work dried up, he compared himself with the Flying Dutchman, condemned to roam the seas forever. “Your career starts with a bang, everyone thinks you’re wonderful, and then middle age, something happens and you go into the wilderness,” he said in 2011 when making a rare return to these shores to conduct Wagner’s work at Covent Garden.
Jeffrey Philip Tate was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on April 28 1943. At the age of three he was examined for flat feet by doctors, who discovered the two conditions. Large parts of his childhood was spent in the Rowley Bristow orthopaedic hospital in Surrey, where he had major surgery aged seven and 12. While in plaster he was wheeled into the hospital’s radio studio so that he could put his hands through the bars on his bed to play the piano for other patients. His first piece was The Mountains of Mourne.
He recovered sufficiently to be head boy at Farnham Grammar School, where Alan Fluck, who later founded Youth and Music, was the lively music master. Young Jeffrey took part in works by Benjamin Britten (Saint Nicolas, as one of the pickled boys) and Gian Carlo Menotti (Amahl and the Night Visitors, accompanying on the piano), meeting both composers when they attended the performances.
Grateful to be “an ambulant creature because of what science had done for me”, Tate determined to study medicine, winning a scholarship to Christ’s College Cambridge. While there he sang in the madrigal society under Raymond Leppard, played piano for the Footlights and directed several plays. He even wrote an application to be an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company but never posted it.
He completed his medical training at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, specialising in eye surgery. Yet his choice of profession was thrown into doubt when a fellow surgeon invited him to a party. One of his fellow guests was the tenor John Kentish, assistant head of the London Opera Centre. As a party piece Kentish asked Tate to accompany him in a song from Die schöne Müllerin. He was astonished by Tate’s sensitivity at the keyboard and urged him to audition to be répétiteur at the Opera Centre.
He was accepted but, having failed part of his final medical exams because of the amount of time he was spending making music, deferred the place while he successfully qualified as a doctor. Before long he had moved to the Royal Opera House, where he helped to prepare singers for conductors such as Georg Solti and Edward Downes.
In the mid-1970s he was Pierre Boulez’s assistant on the preparation of the Ring Cycle at Bayreuth, worked on Paris Opera’s premiere of Berg’s complete Lulu, became assistant to his compatriot John Pritchard at Cologne Opera, and, at the suggestion of a friend, quietly made his conducting debut in Carmen at Gothenburg Opera. He found conducting tiring but not impossible, and now decided that his destiny lay with the baton.
As one of the few people to know Lulu thoroughly, he stepped in to make his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1980 when James Levine was taken ill. A couple of years later he helped the English Chamber Orchestra, traditionally a conductorless ensemble, with their recording for Decca of Chants d’auvergne with Kiri Te Kanawa. His relationship with the orchestra flourished and in 1985 he was appointed principal conductor, a position he held for a decade.
When Bernard Haitink joined the Royal Opera as music director in 1987 Tate returned to Covent Garden, helping Haitink with programme planning. Yet increasingly his conducting took him to opera houses and concert halls in continental Europe, including posts at the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Geneva Opera and the Orchestre National de France.
After moving on in the mid-1990s he was rarely seen in Britain, the one notable exception being a return to the Royal Opera in 2011 to conduct Tim Albery’s production of The Flying Dutchman. Critics commented on the stately pace at which he took the work, with some 10 minutes being added to the usual running time. However, Rupert Christiansen in The Daily Telegraph was convinced, saying that Tate’s interpretation “had a grandeur and command worthy of the opera’s ambitions”.
He was an outstanding cook and an invitation to one of the intimate dinner parties he threw at his home in Camden Town was an entrée into an evening of expertly prepared food, carefully chosen wine and stimulating conversation – although he admitted to preferring a beer after a performance. Latterly he spent much of his time in Italy, where he was music director of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples from 2005 to 2010.
Tate, who was appointed CBE in 1990 and knighted by the Duke of Cambridge six weeks ago, suffered a heart attack and died while visiting the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, near Milan.
He is survived by his partner Klaus Kuhlemann, a geologist and his constant companion for the past 40 years.