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British-born Chris Dowdeswell has been established on the South African music scene for over 25 years. He was a regular guest conductor in all major centres and has enjoyed success in the fields of both opera and concerts.
Chris Dowdeswell studied in London, Germany and Monte Carlo. His early career took him to Germany and Austria where he held conducting appointments in Augsburg, Dortmund and Darmstadt, and was guest conductor at the Kammeroper in Vienna.
He came to South Africa in 1981 to take up an appointment as Resident Conductor at the Nico Theatre Centre where he conducted a wide range of operas, concerts, ballets, musicals and oratorios.
For ten years Chris Dowdeswell was based in Port Elizabeth where he was Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Eastern Cape Philharmonic Orchestra.
On returning to Cape Town in 1998 he furthered his career as a part-time lecturer at the UCT Music Department as well as the UFS Music Department in Bloemfontein where he was appointed Artistic Director of the Free State Symphony Orchestra in 2003.
As a free-lance conductor he works regularly for Cape Town Opera, including productions of The Pearl Fishers (at the Grahamstown Festival), La Traviata, Die Fledermaus and Benjamin Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Artscape Opera House. In April 2005 he conducted the final round of the First UNISA Voice Competition in Pretoria.
In 2006 he conducted the joint Cape Town Opera/Norrlands Operan production of Dvorak’s opera Rusalka at the Baxter and in Umeå, Sweden.
More recently he conducted the Brett Bailey production of Verdi’s Macbeth for Cape Town Opera at the Spier Festival, Thomas Rajna’s Valley Song at the KKNK Festival in Oudtshoorn, and Massenet’s Manon at the Artscape Opera House.
In 2008 he conducted a new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto for Cape Town Opera which was filmed and broadcast by SABC television and last October he was responsible for a revival of Verdi’s Aida at the Artscape Opera House with Johan Botha and Angela Brown from the New York Met in the title role.
This year has seen him conduct a new production of The Merry Widow at the State Theatre in Pretoria and in October a ‘production’ of Mozart’s Requiem at Artscape for Cape Town Opera.
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