Daniel Nazareth was born in Bombay and took a degree in Commerce and Economics at Bombay University in 1968. He later studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he was awarded the Sir Adrian Boult Cup, following this with a period of study at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, from which he graduated with distinction in 1975. He served as Conducting Assistant to the Vienna Musikverein in the 1975–1976 season.

In 1977 Daniel Nazareth made his début as a conductor of opera with Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte at the Spoleto Festival, and in 1978 he conducted The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville and La Traviata for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. In March 1982 he conducted a new production of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia for the Arena Theatre in Verona.

In 1976 Daniel Nazareth was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Conducting Fellowship and the Koussevitsky Music Foundation Conductor’s Award at Tanglewood, and in 1978 he won the first International Ernest Ansermet Conducting Competition in Geneva.