Anthony Besch enjoyed a long and busy career as an opera director at a time when the dominance of production values was becoming an ever more marked feature of the world of opera. Besch was, however, reticent by temperament and personally unassuming, and he also in some degree swam against the current in that he remained wary of “concept” productions and convinced of the primacy of common sense, logic and theatrical and musical values.

He was born in London and educated at Rossall School and Oxford, where he took a first in English. But his path in life became settled early on when, still an undergraduate and with at least one successful OUDS production of Shakespeare under his belt, he talked Jack Westrup and the Oxford University Opera Club into letting him stage Mozart’s Idomeneo in 1947. It proved to be a landmark production in that its success drew attention to the virtues of a then neglected masterpiece and helped to restore it to the general repertoire. As the club’s historian wrote, “. . . that terrible bogey . . . the intractability of the Town Hall stage, was forgotten”. The following year Besch staged The Beggar’s Opera at the Oxford Playhouse in E. J. Dent’s new edition.

After leaving Oxford Besch went to Glyndebourne as Moran Caplat’s assistant, where he found himself working first under Carl Ebert, and later Günther Rennert. It was a tough apprenticeship, where anyone less equable or less attentive to minutiae could well have come to grief. In 1953 the opportunity to spread his wings and his first outside professional engagement came when he was asked by Welsh National Opera to direct Verdi’s The Sicilian Vespers, an opera, like Idomeneo, then better known to musicologists than to opera house audiences. His capabilities were quickly noticed and he soon found work at all the important British opera houses and festivals. From the late 1950s onwards he began to be sought-after abroad.

All this time he continued to remain closely involved with Scottish Opera (where enthusiasts still recall a memorable Così fan tutte with Elizabeth Harwood and Janet Baker), and with Sadler’s Wells (where his elegant and spirited productions of Count Ory and The Thieving Magpie have not been bettered). Of his 1975 Magic Flute at the Coliseum for ENO one critic wrote: “Anthony Besch has respected the spirit of Mozart and remained true to convention, tradition and, most important of all, to the score . . . The magic worked.”

At Covent Garden the previous season he had, with the help of the conducting of Colin Davis, brought off an even more difficult feat by convincing a sceptical world of the merits of Mozart’s last opera seria, then still virtually unknown because so rarely performed, La clemenza di Tito. It was described as “an unqualified success . . . a wonderfully integrated production in which all elements . . . were beautifully fused into one. He successfully used the traditions of opera seria so as to hold the interest . . . and produced a smooth flow of action on stage that reflected the music”. In March 1976 the production was taken by the Royal Opera on its visit to La Scala.

Besch’s musicianship and musical sympathies extended beyond neglected classics. He was an important influence on the New Opera Company, which was always close to his heart. The connection was an index of Besch’s readiness to master new and difficult scores, among which were the premieres of Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy at Aldeburgh in 1968, Hamilton’s The Catiline Conspiracy in Scotland in 1974, and the British premieres of Shostakovich’s The Nose (1973) and Ginastera’s Bomarzo (1976).

His sympathy with modern music, his scholarly regard for style and his versatility were always among his distinguishing characteristics, and he commanded a knowledge of music and an intensity of application to the work in hand rare in producers. There was nothing “improvisatory” in his methods: he invariably arrived at the opera house to begin rehearsals punctually, meticulously prepared, and with a detailed scheme of what he wanted when, where and from whom. Singers were often startled to find their movements prescribed by chalked lines that he had earlier marked on the stage. Yet, in spite of his learning, his passion for detail and the fact that, once he had made up his mind about a scene or a character, it was often difficult to budge him, he was no inflexible dogmatist. He could be convinced by argument and was always cool, for example, about opera production as advocacy of a political thesis.

Besch could be curt and sharp-tongued if he thought someone was inattentive or not trying hard but, as a rule, he was equable, patient and good-humoured. He taught, from 1987 to 1989, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where his students and friends found his quizzical, rather donnish, humour much to their taste.

He was unmarried.

Anthony Besch, opera producer and director, was born in London on February 5, 1924. He died there on December 23, 2002, aged 78.