Alexander Faris

[2] His father died of pernicious anaemia when he was a toddler, and his mother moved the family to Belfast, where she became headmistress of Victoria College girls' school.

[3] He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and won a Kitchener Scholarship to study music at Christ Church, Oxford.

[2] He also conducted Summer Song at the Manchester Opera House in 1955 and Irma La Douce in the West End at the Lyric Theatre in 1958.

In 1960, with Sadler's Wells Opera, he and director Wendy Toye helped to revive interest in the operettas of Jacques Offenbach, beginning with their much-revived production of Orpheus in the Underworld, followed in 1961 by La Vie parisienne.

[4] Then in January 1962, on the first day after the copyright on W. S. Gilbert's works expired, he conducted Iolanthe with Sadler's Wells at Stratford-upon-Avon and later The Mikado with that company.

[5] His original London cast recordings include Summer Song (1956), Irma La Douce (1958), Robert and Elizabeth (1964), The Great Waltz (1970), Bordello (1974), Bar Mitzvah Boy (1978), and Charlie and Algernon (1979).

[3] For television he wrote the theme music for The Duchess of Duke Street (1976),[8] Wings (1977),[9] Fanny by Gaslight (1981),[10] and Upstairs, Downstairs (1971), his most enduring composition.

[2] "The Edwardians" was also used as the title music for the "Upshares, Downshares" finance slot on BBC Radio 4's PM news programme.

His other compositions include the song "A Century of Micks" for the choir of the Irish Guards, the orchestral work Sketches of Regency England and the operetta R Loves J (Chichester Festival, 1973, based on Peter Ustinov's Romanoff and Juliet).