and Arabella (which won 2008's prestigious Helpmann Award for Best Opera). He collaborated on new productions of The Tales of Hoffmann and Alcina. CD recordings of The Love for Three Oranges and Rusalka have been released by Chandos and received very positive reviews in the international and local press. Hickox also led major revivals, including Tannhäuser, Death in Venice, Giulio Cesare, Billy Budd, and Janáček's The Makropulos Affair. In recent years, the Australian opera singers Fiona Janes and Bruce Martin, formerly featured with Opera Australia, had left the organisation and criticised Hickox and Opera Australia for perceived declines in artistic standards since the start of Hickox's tenure. Hickox was contracted as Opera Australia's music director through to 2012 at the time of his death in November 2008. Hickox was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2002 Queen's Birthday Honours. His recording repertoire concentrated on British music, in which he made a number of recording premieres for Chandos Records (he made over 280 recordings for this company). In 1997 he won the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for his recording of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes. He garnered five Gramophone Awards: for recordings of Britten's War Requiem (1992); Frederick Delius's Sea Drift (1994); William Walton's Troilus and Cressida (1995); the original 1913 version of Ralph Vaughan Williams' A London Symphony (2001 Record of the Year and Best Orchestral Disc); and Charles Villiers Stanford's Songs of the Sea (2006 Editor's Choice). He made only the second recording of Delius's Requiem (1996). He was awarded a Doctorate of Music from Durham University in 2003 and was an Honorary Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge. He received two Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, the first Sir Charles Groves Award, the Evening Standard Opera Award and the Association of British Orchestras Award. He was President of the Elgar Society. Death On 23 November 2008, during a recording session of Holst's First Choral Symphony for Chandos, Hickox was taken ill and died in Swansea from a dissecting thoracic aneurysm. He had been scheduled to conduct a new production of Vaughan Williams' Riders to the Sea at English National Opera later that month. A memorial service was held at Queens' College, Cambridge, on 26 November 2008, with music conducted by Sir David Willcocks. A service of Thanksgiving took place in St Paul's Cathedral, London on 12 March 2009. Brett Dean dedicated