Reginald Goodall

Sir Reginald Goodall CBE (13 July 1901 – 5 May 1990) was an English conductor and singing coach, noted for his performances of the operas of Richard Wagner and for conducting the premieres of several operas by Benjamin Britten.

Goodall was born in Lincoln, and studied at the Royal College of Music and elsewhere in Europe. In 1929, he became the organist and choirmaster at St. Alban's Church, Holborn.

Passionate about all things German, in the 1930s Goodall openly sympathized with the Nazi regime, which he perceived as a defender of Germanic cultural traditions. Goodall also actively supported Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, and he eventually joined the party just five days after Britain's declaration of war on Germany. He maintained his outspoken pro-Nazi views during World War II, the uninhibited expression of which once led him to be briefly questioned by the police. Goodall was known to refer to the Holocaust as a "BBC Jewish plot".

During the war, Goodall conducted the Wessex Philharmonic, a freelance orchestra which included some ex-members of the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra. In 1944, Goodall joined the Sadler's Wells company, forerunner of the English National Opera. An early triumph was his conducting of the premiere of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes in 1945. He conducted this again later at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he had first conducted in 1947. He was an assistant conductor to the music director of the Royal Opera House, Karl Rankl, in the late 1940s. Goodall also conducted at Glyndebourne, including another Britten premiere, this time of The Rape of Lucretia, which was also his first recording, with EMI.

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