Opera Scotland

Malcolm Sargent Suggest updates

Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Born Stamford, 29 April 1895.

Died London, 3 October 1967.

English conductor.

Sir Malcolm Sargent is primarily remembered as an orchestral conductor, particularly associated with the BBC Proms.  His conducting of the Last Night was a national institution and, although too ill to conduct, he made a speech at that event a few weeks before his death.  He also maintained a long relationship with the Huddersfield Choral Society.

As an opera conductor his main activity was with BNOC in its early years (1922-26), when he conducted a range that included  Bach (Coffee Cantata);  Mozart (Magic Flute);  Wagner (Mastersingers),  Verdi (Rigoletto, Aïda),  Bizet (Carmen) and  Puccini (Tosca).  He conducted the premieres of Hugh the Drover (Vaughan Williams 1924) and At the Boar's Head (Holst 1925).

From 1926-28 he was musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, touring the country conducting the repertoire of Gilbert & Sullivan operas. He made several of the early recordings of those works, and made a further group of modern recordings in the sixties.

He worked at Covent Garden only occasionally from 1936, but led the premiere there of Troilus and Cressida (Walton 1954).