Conductor Andrew Davis, who headed orchestras on 3 continents, dies at 80 : NPR

Conductor Andrew Davis, right, raises his arms in a bow, accompanied by Renée Fleming and Peter Rose, center, during Richard Strauss’s final dress rehearsal. Caprice at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in New York, March 25, 2011.

Richard Drew/AP

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Conductor Andrew Davis, right, raises his arms in a bow, accompanied by Renée Fleming and Peter Rose, center, during Richard Strauss’s final dress rehearsal. Caprice at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in New York, March 25, 2011.

Richard Drew/AP

Andrew Davis, a renowned British conductor who was music director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and orchestras on three continents, has died. He was 80 years old.

Davis died Saturday at the Rusk Institute in Chicago from leukemia, his manager, Jonathan Brill of Opus 3 Artists, said Sunday.

Davis had suffered from the illness for a year and a half to two years, but it became acute shortly after his 80th birthday on February 2. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last December in the American premiere of his own orchestration of Handel’s “”. Messiah.”

“An accomplished, incredibly versatile musician and a phenomenal colleague,” soprano Renée Fleming said in an email to The Associated Press. “It takes a particular mastery to be a great conductor, the power to make nearly a hundred musicians (each, at heart, a diva or divo) hook on your slightest gesture. It is therefore remarkable that even With this strength, Andrew’s primary quality was his innate happiness. He had a contagious joy that came through in one way or another in every measure of music he made.

As his 80th birthday approached, Davis was invigorated by the challenge of training an orchestra, especially young musicians.

“Harnessing all that energy and enthusiasm and passion, and galvanizing it into a totally, totally unified design and not just a design but – what’s the word? – an achievement,” he said in an interview with the AP last July after rehearsing the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America in workshops and then at Carnegie Hall in New York. “I scold them more than I would, but I always hope with a wink.”

Davis was music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1975 to 1988 and of the Glyndebourne Festival in Britain from 1988 to 2000; conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1989 to 2000 and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra from 2013 to 2019; then musical director of the Lyric Opera from 2000 to 2021.

Davis made his Lyric Opera debut in 1987 and has conducted approximately 700 performances of 62 operas by 22 composers.

“He has been a true artistic partner to me and a shining light to many of us,” Lyric Opera general director Anthony Freud said in a statement. “We will miss his incredible artistry, his extraordinary wisdom, his irrepressible humor, his unfettered joie de vivre, and his dedication to the arts and humanities.”

Davis conducted a dozen Last Night of the Proms concerts, an annual celebration of Britain at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He twice delivered the customary speech to the crackle of the Major General’s song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance.”

Born in Ashridge, Hertfordshire, England, Andrew Frank Davis played the organ for his parish choir and joined the choir at Watford Grammar School for Boys. He studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London, became an organ student at King’s College, Cambridge, and played piano, harpsichord and organ at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in 1966 to 1970.

He made his conducting debut with the BBC Symphony in 1970, became assistant conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra, then, in 1971, made his North American debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

“One of the finest conductors of his generation,” said Clive Gillinson, executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall. “I worked with him continuously at the London Symphony Orchestra, and the musicians and I were always totally captivated by his superb musicianship.”

Davis made his conducting debut in Strauss’s “Capriccio” at Glyndebourne in 1973 and the following year met his future wife, soprano Gianna Rolandi, when she sang Zerbinetta in performances of “Ariadne auf Naxos ” by Strauss which he conducted in New York. The Metropolitan Opera, York. They married in 1989 and had a son, composer Edward Frazier Davis.

Davis became a Commander of the British Empire in 1992 and a Knight Bachelor in 1999. The family moved to Chicago when he was hired by the Lyric Opera.

During the pandemic, Davis translated Virgil’s “Aeneid” from Latin to English.

“I took an entrance exam in classics at New College, Oxford,” he told NPR, “but a few weeks later I took the organ scholarship tests at King’s College, Cambridge, which I won to my great surprise. So that was the end of the classics for me.”

His wife died in 2021. In addition to his son, he is survived by a sister, Jill Atkins, and brothers Martin Davis and Tim Davis. Funeral services will be private.