He studied oboe, piano, and composition at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in Sydney. He became principal oboist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1943 at the age of 21. It was during this period that he first began conducting.
Mackerras moved to Britain, where he performed with the Sadler's Wells orchestra and began studying conducting with Michael Mudie. Mackerras married Helena Judith Wilkins, a clarinet player who was also with the orchestra, in 1947. They would have two daughters. He successfully applied for a British Council Scholarship to study conducting with Vaclav Talich at the Prague in 1947.
"In those days, the only way you could study Slavonic arts or culture was to go to Czechoslovakia," Mackerras said in an interview with Opera News. "The Iron Curtain really was iron." He says he would have stayed, but for the fact that Communists came into power in February 1948. "[T]hey became exceedingly suspicious of foreigners. The Czechs hated anything German at that point, even Beethoven---though they still considered Mozart an 'honorary Czech' because of his love of their country and his famous opera performances in Prague."
As Stephanie Von Buchau in Opera News notes, "The year Mackerras spent in Czechoslovakia changed his life.
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