He was born in Stockport, England on 18/4/1953 and died in Colchester on 14/2/2007. He studied at the Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. He began his career at the English National Opera (1976) and continued at Opera North, the Scottish Opera and Opera Australia. He has directed, among others, the operas Eugene Onegin (Royal Opera London), La bohème, The Coronation of Poppea [La incoronazione di Poppea] (English National Opera), Nabucco, Tosca, The Bartered Bride [Prodaná nevěsta], Werther, Prince Igor (Opera North), The fallen woman [La traviata] (English Touring Opera), Manon Lescaut, Don Giovanni, Samson et Dalila (Bregenz Festival), Macbeth (Hamburg), A Masked Ball [Un ballo in maschera] (Anvers), etc. He collaborated with the Hamburg State Opera, the Wexford Festival Opera and the New Israeli Opera. He directed classic works from Shakespeare and Moliere to T.S. Eliot and Tennessee Williams, as well as avant-garde performances and popular musicals, including Antony and Cleopatra, Richard II, Hamlet, Le Misanthrope, Doctor Dolittle, as well as the world premieres of Phyllis Nagy’s works The Strip, Neverland and Butterfly Kiss. He worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company (1996) as an honorary collaborating artist and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. For the GNO he directed Carmen (Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Athens Festival, 2006/7), but owing to his death, the direction was completed by his associates.