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Sir Jeffrey Philip Tate (28 April 19432 June 2017) was an English conductor of classical music. Tate was born with spina bifida and had an associated spinal curvature. After studying medicine at the University of Cambridge and beginning a medical career in London, he switched to music and worked under Georg Solti at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, before making his conducting debut in 1979 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. He held conducting appointments with the English Chamber Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, among others, and was the first person to be appointed principal conductor of the Royal Opera House. He was knighted for his services to music in 2017.
Tate initially read medicine at Christ's College, Cambridge (1961–64), specializing in eye surgery. He later worked at St Thomas's Hospital, London, before giving up his clinical career to study music at the London Opera Centre from 1970 to 1971. He became a repetiteur and a coach at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under the tutelage of Sir Georg Solti. He accompanied Maria Callas in the concert aria Ah! perfido by Beethoven in 1976, one of last recordings Callas made, and reissued in a 2023 complete set. Ralph Moore review of 'La Divina Maria Callas in all her roles: Studio & live recordings 1949 to 1976' (Warner Classics) at MusicWeb, 29 June 2023 accessed 14 February 2024.
Tate conducted the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1980. His range at the Royal Opera House encompassed Mozart ( La clemenza di Tito in 1982, Così fan tutte in 1989, Le nozze di Figaro in 1991, Idomeneo in 1989), Strauss ( Ariadne auf Naxos in 1985, Der Rosenkavalier in 1989, Arabella in 1990), Wagner ( Lohengrin in 1988, Der fliegende Holländer in 2011) and French repertoire ( Manon in 1987, Les Contes d'Hoffmann in 1991, Carmen in 1994). Search of Jeffrey Tate in Royal Opera House database accessed 1 July 2022.
In 1985, he was appointed the first principal conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra (ECO), with which group he undertook a recording of all the symphonies by Mozart for EMI in the 1980s, and held the post until 2000. Other recordings with the ECO included late symphonies of Haydn, and a Mozart piano concerto cycle with Mitsuko Uchida. In 1982 he won the 'Outstanding First Achievement of the Year in Opera' for conducting Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, at the Royal Opera House in June 1981, in the SWET (now Olivier) Awards. Olivier Awards (Society of West End Theatre Awards) 1982 accessed 23 June 2022. In September 1986, Tate became principal conductor of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the first person in the company's history to have that title. He held this Covent Garden post until 1991, and subsequently became principal guest conductor at Covent Garden from 1991 to 1994. He was principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 1991 to 1995. In 2005, Tate was appointed music director of the San Carlo Theatre of Naples, remaining in the post until 2010. He created the Rolf Liebermann opera La Forêt, based on Ostrovsky's The Forest, in Geneva in April 1987.Clark, Andrew. Switzerland - Liebermann premiere. Opera, August 1987, Vol.38 No.8, p939-941. He conducted The Ring at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in 1994,
In October 2007, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra announced the appointment of Tate as its next chief conductor, and he took up the post in 2009. In 2014, the orchestra announced the extension of his contract as chief conductor until 2019, and he held the post until his death in June 2017. Tate was principal guest conductor and artistic adviser of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in part as a result of his association with the orchestra from a 1998 production of the Ring, from 2016 until his death.
The Opera magazine obituary noted that his "recordings, notably of Lulu, Hänsel und Gretel and Elektra, demonstrate his emotive power and continual care that the singing should never be drowned by the pit".Webber, Christopher. Obituary: Jeffrey Tate. Opera, August 2017, p. 1006
Tate was president of UK Spina Bifida charity ASBAH (now SHINE Spina) from 1989. A portrait of Jeffrey Tate is in David Blum's book Quintet, Five Journeys toward Musical Fulfillment (Cornell University Press, 1999). It originally appeared as an article on 30 April 1990 issue of The New Yorker.
In private life, Tate was partners with Klaus Kuhlemann, a German geomorphologist, whom he met when conducting at Cologne from 1977. David Blum, Quintet: Five Journeys Towards Musical Fulfillment, p. 59. Retrieved 11 January 2014 Tate has described this situation as being an outsider on two scores:
Tate and Kuhlemann eventually married.
Tate was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to British music overseas. He was also appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1990 Birthday Honours. Tate conducted his last concerts on 30 and 31 May 2017, in Bolzano and Trento, with the Haydn Orchestra. He died of a heart attack in Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy, on 2 June 2017 at the age of 74. Kuhlemann, his spouse, survives him.
As a keyboard player he played organ for recordings of Vivaldi choral works in the 1970s, and was part of the continuo for Le nozze di Figaro in 1982, conducted by Georg Solti on Decca.
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