Recently appointed Music Director of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, JEFFREY TATE studied medicine at the University of Cambridge and qualified as a doctor at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. However, music had always been a great interest, and in 1970 he joined the music staff at Covent Garden, where he worked with Solti, Davis, Kleiber, and others. In 1976 he assisted Boulez at Bayreuth in the centenary celebration of The Ring, and he also worked with Karajan in Salzburg. He rose to prominence immediately after his public conducting debut with Carmen at the Gothenburg Opera.

Tate conducts regularly in the world's leading opera houses and festivals with a repertoire based on Mozart, Strauss, Wagner, and French opera. At the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, he has conducted new productions of Lulu, Peter Grimes, and The Ring with the Orchestre National de France. Recent seasons have included Parsifal in Bonn; Die Walküre at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires; The Flying Dutchman at Rome Opera; and his triumphant debut at La Scala with Peter Grimes and Rosenkavalier, where he returned to conduct Tannhäuser during the 2004/05 season. Future projects include The Marriage of Figaro and Candide at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and Ariadne auf Naxos and Salome at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

Tate has appeared with the world's leading orchestras, including the London Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, and many others.

His numerous recordings include Tales of Hoffman, Lulu, Mozart's Piano Concertos with Mitsuko Uchida, all of the Mozart Symphonies with the English Chamber Orchestra, the major orchestral works of Elgar with the London Symphony Orchestra, and the complete A Midsummer Night's Dream of Mendelssohn with the Rotterdam Philharmonic.