This past week saw the passing of Australian conductor, Sir Charles Mackerras. He was 84 years old. A man of mind-boggling musical diversity, he managed to be a specialist in the works of composers as different as Mozart, Janácek and Gilbert and Sullivan. Although his parents were Australian, he was born in Schenectady, New York, but moved to Australia when he was three years old. His achievements and honours - including his knighthood which was conferred on him in 1979, can be read about in any of the many tributes showered on him immediately following his death. I am writing of him here today not for the purposes of adding yet another obituary to the burgeoning list of such, but because I shall always remember him fondly as the very first conductor of opera I ever worked with. At the age of eleven I auditioned for, and secured, the gig of playing treble recorder in the orchestra for a then brand-new work written by Benjamin Britten, Noye's Fludde. Rehearsals took place not too far from where I was at boarding school and arrangements were made for me to attend them. Those rehearsals were led by a delightful, and, as I later came to know, very able conductor named Merlin Channon. In due course, there were full rehearsals with the professional singers and the English Chamber Orchestra, leading to the first performance of the piece in Southwark Cathedral in South London, and subsequently in Orford Church, near Britten's home in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. The principal conductor was Charles Mackerras, then aged 32. He had come to know Britten when both men were associated with Sadler's Wells Opera, shortly after the end of the war. I had been a boy chorister under eminent choir conductor and harpsichordist George Malcolm, so I was already fairly well disciplined in how to behave during rehearsals but this was excitement of a wholly new order for me! I had never been involved in opera and the sets, costumes, makeup and singing both fascinated and thrilled me. It was an additional buzz that the composer was often in attendance at the rehearsals. During breaks, he would happily mingle with the cast and the orchestra, and always took special care to ensure that the children, both singers and instrumentalists, were having a good time. While later in my association with Britten I knew him to be waspish and with an ability to be very short and hurtful, at that time he always seemed relaxed and avuncular. The picture I had of him in my head as I typed that was of him standing, surrounded by we adoring children, outside Orford Church, on a beautiful June day, his face wreathed in smiles, and asking us whether we liked the parts he had written for us. "Oh" I said "I'm just playing the recorder." "Well," said Britten "I took particular care with that so you had better play it as well as you can!" 52 years later I remember that as though it were yesterday.

While we children were all in awe of Britten, we thoroughly enjoyed playing and singing for Mackerras. He was kind, understanding and extremely patient with all of the children. The ECO obviously also liked being conducted by him. I later found out that they liked his courtesy and his clarity of direction, both in his explanations of what he wanted and in his baton technique. The first performances were a big hit, both critically and with the audience (or congregation, rather, as it took place in church, BB having directed that it should never be performed in a concert hall). By the time that year's Aldeburgh Festival came to an end, I was wholly smitten with opera and performing and couldn't wait to do it again. I didn't have to wait long, as two years later, Noye's Fludde was repeated at the Aldeburgh Festival and a live recording was made by Decca - a recording still considered to be one of Decca's finest, and still the only commercially available recording of the work. On this occasion the conductor was Norman Del Mar. It was many years before I found out that the reason Charles Mackerras was not engaged to conduct the recording was that he had been heard to make a comment about BB's fondness for children, and he was immediately declared anathema by BB and his associates. I believe that they patched up this rift in later years but I am sure things were never the same again between them. That was how it was with Britten; he certainly never forgot and never really forgave either.

So, yesterday I put my CD of Noye's Fludde on the system and listened to it for the first time in many years. I can be heard in a two measure solo (!) and got a name check on the original album cover. Even my school chums couldn't help but be impressed by that! As I said, Mackerras wasn't conducting what I was listening to but, as is wont to happen with me, the memories of that glorious Summer, more than 50 years ago, brought a smile to my face, only tinged with the sadness that 'my first opera conductor' has gone.

Have a happy and constructive week!