Conductor born with severe disabilities

Born: April 28, 1943;

Died: June 2, 2017

SIR Jeffrey Tate, who has died aged 74, was a qualified doctor who overcame severe disabilities to become a celebrated conductor. He became principal conductor of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and by the 1990s was conducting across Europe.

Sir Jeffrey had been told that he would live no more than 50 years because of his spina bifida and kyphosis or curvature of the spine, but after several serious operations as a child, he worked first as a eye specialist and then as a full-time conductor, heaving himself up on to a stool for the performance.

He was born in Salisbury in Wiltshire and as child discovered a talent for the piano. However, he spent much of his childhood in hospital, where he had major surgery when he was seven and 12.

He attended Farnham Grammar School and then opted to train as a doctor, winning a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge. Music remained a major preoccupation for him, however - he played piano for the Footlights and sang in the madrigal society.

On graduating, he trained at St Thomas's Hospital in London, specialising in eye surgery, but it was a chance encounter with the tenor John Kentish that led to him changing career. Sir Jeffrey accompanied Kentish on the piano at a party and Kentish suggested that he should take it further.

He auditioned at the Royal Opera for the job of repetiteur, a coach who helps rehearse opera singers. He assisted Pierre Boulez on Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth Festival 1976–80, and in the first performance of the three-act Lulu in Paris, 1979.

His debut was Carmen for the Gothenburg Opera in Sweden and for Sir Jeffrey it was a moment when everything seemed right and his choice of career was sealed. "As the music moved under my hands," he said, "I suddenly felt that I was doing something I had been waiting to do all my life."

He made his Royal Opera conducting debut in 1982 with La clemenza di Tito, and returned in 1985 to conduct a new production of Ariadne auf Naxos. The following year, in 1986, he was appointed principal conductor of The Royal Opera, a position he held until 1991.

By the mid 1990s he was working principally in Europe, although he returned to the Royal Opera in 2011 to conduct Tim Albery's production of The Flying Dutchman.

In addition to his posts with The Royal Opera he held positions with English Chamber Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others.

He was appointed CBE in 1990 and was knighted earlier this year. He was president of Shine, the spina bifida charity. In later years, he spent much of his time in Italy, and is survived by his partner Klaus Kuhlemann.