Stuart Challender; Conductor of Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Stuart Challender, chief conductor and artistic director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra since 1987, died of AIDS-related complications on Friday at age 44.

Challender, diagnosed HIV-positive in 1983, died in a hospice where he spent the last few months, an orchestra spokesman said.

Challender had conducted all the major Australian symphony, chamber and opera orchestras in recent years.

He went to Europe in 1968 as a boy and spent 12 years studying conducting in Hamburg and Vienna. In Switzerland, he was resident conductor at the Municipal Theatre in Lucerne and opera houses in Basel and Zurich before returning to Australia in 1980.

He conducted Dame Joan Sutherland in “Lucia di Lammermoor” for the Netherlands Opera in 1982 and three years later made his U.S. debut, conducting Eugene Onegin at the San Diego Opera. He had also conducted in the Orange County Performing Arts Center in 1989.