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."

Besch was born in London and educated at Rossall School, where he had his first contact with operatic performance, singing Captain Corcoran in H.M.S. Pinafore in a joint production with Alleyn's School. 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.

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