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Andrew Davis, a famous British conductor who was music director of the Lyric Opera in Chicago, has died, BTA reports. He was principal conductor of three more symphony orchestras – the BBC, Toronto and Melbourne. Andrew Davies was 80 years old.
Davis died Saturday of leukemia, his manager Jonathan Brill announced Sunday.
The conductor has been battling the disease for 2 years, but it worsened shortly after his 80th birthday on February 2. Last December, he conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the US premiere of his own orchestration of Handel’s Messiah.
“An outstanding musician, incredibly flexible and a phenomenal colleague,” soprano Renee Fleming said in an email to The Associated Press. “To be a great conductor requires a special kind of power, the power to make nearly a hundred musicians obey your smallest gesture. So it is remarkable that even with this strength, Andrew’s main quality was his innate happiness. He was gifted with an infectious joy that somehow came through in every bar of his music.”
Andrew Davies made his debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1986 and has conducted approximately 700 performances of 62 operas by 22 composers.
He made his conducting debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1970, became assistant conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonic, and in 1971 began conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
In 1992, Davies was awarded an Order of the British Empire. In 2000, he was appointed music director and chief conductor of the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
During the pandemic, Davis translated Virgil’s Aeneid from Latin into English into verse.
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