Steven Pimlott was one of the most versatile and inventive theatre directors of his generation, equally at home in opera as he was in classics, new plays and blockbusting musicals. His acclaimed productions included Carmen with José Carreras, the ENO's The Coronation of Poppea, Hamlet and Richard II for the RSC, three world premieres of plays by Phyllis Nagy, musicals including Dr Dolittle and Bombay Dreams and the West End production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There were None.

Admired by critics and actors alike he had a way of dispelling thoughts about “director’s theatre” by regularly staging some of the best and most theatrical productions of the day.

Steven Charles Pimlott was born in 1953 and educated at Manchester Grammar School where, at the age of 12, he gave what he described as a “definitive” Gertrude in the school play, saying later: “In the middle of all my own Oedipal confusions, the chance to act out a mother was rather liberating. I genuinely felt that I had an empathy with that role . . .” His Hamlet on this occasion was the future television historian Michael Wood. Later Pimlott studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he gained a degree in English.

He began his theatrical career in 1978 with the newly formed Opera North where he directed numerous productions including La bohãme, Nabuccoand the British premiere of Prince Igor which he also translated with David Lloyd Jones. After early theatre productions in Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds he began directing opera worldwide, notably Don Giovanni (Victoria State Opera), Samson et Dalila (Bregenz and Amsterdam), La traviata (New Israeli Opera) and Macbeth (Hamburg).

Pimlott recognised that his experience in opera affected the way he worked in theatre: “Because opera is often in a foreign language and because the emphasis on the visuals is very crucial, you learn to tell stories imagistically,” he said. “By the way things look, by the positions people take. I think that’s very useful as a director of straight plays.”

In 1996 he became an associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company where he directed many productions, including Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra and Samuel West’s Richard II and a wonderfully caustic Hamlet. Other plays included Murder in the Cathedral, Tennessee Williams’s Camino Realand the world premieres of Michael Hastings’s Unfinished Business and Robert Holman’s Bad Weather. Subsequently he became artistic director of The Other Place (19982001).

His productions outside the RSC during this time included Nagy’s Butterfly Kiss at the Almeida, The Strip (Royal Court), Neverland (Ambassadors), and Moliãre’s The Miser (National Theatre).

In 1990 Pimlott had directed Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, complete with flying pointillist scenery, at the National Theatre, but it was the international success of his revival of Rice and Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1993, London Palladium, Canada, Australia and US, subsequently filmed with Donny Osmond, Richard Attenborough and Joan Collins) that gave him the financial security to pick and choose his varied theatrical projects. He directed Les Misérables in Israel and he had two other big British musical hits — Dr Dolittle, starring Phillip Schofield, (Apollo Hammersmith) and A. R. Rahman and Don Black’s Bombay Dreams (Apollo Victoria), a £3.5 million production that recouped its investment within a year.

Pimlott often reflected on a directorial identity that veered between classics and coach trade entertainment: “The first film I ever saw was The King and I, and my first theatre trip was to Richard IIIwith Christo-pher Plummer at Stratford, and I didn’t see anything contradictory about loving both. I think they have been equally powerful influences.”

He was co-artistic director, with Ruth MacKenzie and Martin Duncan, of the Chiches-ter Festival Theatre (2003-05), where he directed The Master and Margarita, The Seagull and David Warner’s King Lear, and in 2005 he once again surprised critics and audiences by directing a West End production of Kevin Elyot’s adaptation of Christie’s And Then There were None (Gielgud), with Tara Fitzgerald, Gemma Jones and Graham Crowden, which he described as “gorgeous, wicked, funny — but not Samuel Beckett”.

In March and April last year Pimlott directed Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House.

The previous year he gave a master class in directing at the Haymarket Theatre for young drama students. He described the art of directing as “something of a mystery, even to me” but added: “It’s a bit like tuning into a radio station. You start with white noise, then something will happen or somebody will say something or someone will do something. You keep twiddling the knobs and then you hear a bit more. Gradually, hopefully, everyone tunes into the wavelength. If everybody’s being positive, the choices will start to make themselves.”

He was appointed OBE this year.

He is survived by his wife Daniela Bechly, whom he married in 1991, and their daughter and two sons.

Steven Pimlott, OBE, director, was born on April 18, 1953. He died of cancer on February 14, 2007, aged 53