Richard Bradshaw, the charismatic conductor who breathed life into Canada's music scene, and delivered a new opera house to the Canadian Opera Company, has died of an apparent heart attack.
Bradshaw, 63, is reported to have collapsed Wednesday night at Pearson International Airport upon returning from a family vacation in the Maritimes.
The general director of the Canadian Opera Company, the British maestro first came to the company as a guest conductor in 1988. In the following year, he became chief conductor and head of music.
In January 1998, he was named general director, and in subsequent years led a fundraising effort to move the COC from its humble concert hall to a new stage. The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts opened last summer.
The COC released a statement Thursday:
"The Canadian Opera Company is deeply saddened to learn of the sudden passing of its long-time and beloved General Director Richard Bradshaw, last night in Toronto. The Company expresses its heartfelt condolences to Mr. Bradshaw's family, his wife Diana, daughter Jenny and son James...."
"In our sorrow, we pay tribute to the inspiration and leadership he played in the cultural landscape of his adopted country," says David Ferguson, president of the Board. "We are grieving and we will miss him terribly."
Bradshaw attracted talent to the COC, including Canadian directors from stage and screen such as Robert Lepage, Atom Egoyan and Francois Girard.
The 1993 double bill of Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle" and Schoenberg's "Erwartung," directed by Lepage, was the first of a series of collaborations that earned the COC international acclaim and the Toronto production traveled to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and the Edinburgh International Festival.
"His contribution to the Canadian arts scene was huge," says Joel Katz, Chairman, Voice Department, The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory of Music.
"In my opinion his greatest accomplishment was getting that beautiful new opera house built. He got the momentum going after the project was dead. He got it going again and saw it through to its completion."
"Richard is responsible for that opera house. Everyone knows it," said Elaine Calder, President of the Oregon Symphony in Portland, Oregon. "He worked so hard to make this happen. I just wish he could have had more time to enjoy it."
Having first met Bradshaw in the early 1990s, Calder said: "He was avid for life. He was funny. He was hugely intelligent. He was interested in a range of things beyond music. You could never predict what he would talk to you about when he would call."
As for Bradshaw's legacy, "It's enormous," says Calder.
Katz couldn't agree more. "Richard joins a select company of people who have had a profound impact on the arts in Canada."
