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Last modified on Mon 22 Feb 2021 00.21 EST
Though most closely associated with the works of Benjamin Britten, the conductor Steuart Bedford, who has died aged 81 after complications from Parkinson’s disease, was able to turn his professionalism and interpretative talents to great advantage in a range of other repertory too. The operas of Mozart elicited from him an authoritative response over a number of years at Garsington Opera while it was based in Oxfordshire.
Having launched his professional career with The Beggar’s Opera at Sadler’s Wells theatre in 1967, he went on to conduct his own edition of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea at the Royal Academy of Music (1969), following that with the first modern British performances of Donizetti’s Belisario, also at the RAM (1972). During the years of Britten’s final illness in the early 1970s, Bedford came to the fore as a reliable and insightful interpreter of his works. Having already assisted on the 1966 Decca re