Anthony Besch

Anthony John Elwyn Besch (5 February 1924 – 23 December 2002) was an English opera and theatre director. As a young man he worked at Glyndebourne assisting the directors Carl Ebert and Günther Rennert. His first work as an opera director was for Welsh National Opera in 1954. Among other British companies with whom he worked were Opera North, D'Oyly Carte, The Royal Opera, the Aldeburgh Festival and Garsington Opera. He was most closely associated with English National Opera (and its predecessor, Sadler's Wells Opera), Scottish Opera, and the New Opera Company.

Besch established an international reputation, and directed operas in continental Europe, North and South America and Australia. He was wary of "concept" productions, preferring to stage operas in a traditional manner, with what the critic Alan Blyth called "his scrupulous eye for what looked good and proved practical on stage." From Rossall he went on to Worcester College, Oxford, reading English, but while an undergraduate he was called up for military service and was assigned to the artillery. He was demobilised in 1947, and returned to Oxford, resuming his studies and embarking on a directorial career. In June of that year he directed Love's Labours Lost for the Oxford University Dramatic Society, with a cast including the future drama critic Kenneth Tynan. Later in the same year he persuaded Jack Westrup and the Opera Club to let him present Mozart's Idomeneo, which was then little known. The Times credited Besch's production with helping restore the work to the general repertoire. In 1948 he directed The Beggar's Opera for the club.

In 1949 Besch directed an adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey at the Theatre Royal, Windsor. In 1950 he left Oxford, having graduated with a first class degree. At Glyndebourne Besch also worked with the producers Carl Ebert and Günther Rennert. The Times commented, "It was a tough apprenticeship, where anyone less equable or less attentive to minutiae could well have come to grief." He joined Sadler's Wells Opera as a staff producer, tasked with keeping existing productions fresh for revivals in London and on tour. He directed only one production for the Royal Opera, La clemenza di Tito in 1974. As with his student production of Idomeneo, the 1974 Covent Garden Clemenza is credited with helping to rehabilitate the work. and added:

Teacher Besch taught opera direction at the London Opera Centre (1962–68), the University of Toronto (1969–70) and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (1986–89).

Personal life Besch's long-term partner was the designer John Stoddart; the two collaborated on several productions, including a Così fan tutte for Scottish Opera (1967) which many critics thought Besch's finest achievement.

In 1999 Besch suffered a stroke, and radically cut back on his work. He died in London on 23 December 2002, aged 78.