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| In the television programmes that he made and commissioned, Dennis Marks, who has died aged 66 following complications from leukaemia, made the most of the BBC’s commitment to cultural life: it provided the perfect environment for what he sought to do. Realising his ambitions for live performance as general director of English National Opera proved more elusive, but he went on to do much more in broadcasting, particularly radio, once free of the demands of having to run an organisation. | In the television programmes that he made and commissioned, Dennis Marks, who has died aged 66 following complications from leukaemia, made the most of the BBC’s commitment to cultural life: it provided the perfect environment for what he sought to do. Realising his ambitions for live performance as general director of English National Opera proved more elusive, but he went on to do much more in broadcasting, particularly radio, once free of the demands of having to run an organisation. |
| Dennis’s desire to communicate his love and knowledge of music, and the context in which it was created, lay at the heart of the outstanding TV documentaries that he produced. Liszt in Weimar (1986), for example, covered the composer’s piano playing, romances, travels and the social, cultural and political world that nurtured him. Dennis could tell this story in all its cultural complexity and thereby further understanding of Liszt’s music, because, as with his other favourite composers – Mahler, Janáček, Wagner and Bartók – he was a true European. Mitteleuropa was in his blood. | Dennis’s desire to communicate his love and knowledge of music, and the context in which it was created, lay at the heart of the outstanding TV documentaries that he produced. Liszt in Weimar (1986), for example, covered the composer’s piano playing, romances, travels and the social, cultural and political world that nurtured him. Dennis could tell this story in all its cultural complexity and thereby further understanding of Liszt’s music, because, as with his other favourite composers – Mahler, Janáček, Wagner and Bartók – he was a true European. Mitteleuropa was in his blood. |
| He thought big and took risks, as with the wonderfully evocative Vespers in Venice (1989). When John Eliot Gardiner conducted Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 in St Mark’s, Dennis seized the opportunity to highlight the basilica’s spectacular architecture, shooting on film to guarantee richer and deeper colours. This called for six cameras placed all over the building, synchronised with each other and with the sound recording, and proved a triumph for all concerned. | He thought big and took risks, as with the wonderfully evocative Vespers in Venice (1989). When John Eliot Gardiner conducted Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 in St Mark’s, Dennis seized the opportunity to highlight the basilica’s spectacular architecture, shooting on film to guarantee richer and deeper colours. This called for six cameras placed all over the building, synchronised with each other and with the sound recording, and proved a triumph for all concerned. |
| At the BBC, Dennis held posts as editor, music programmes (1985-88), assistant head of music and arts (1988-91) and head of music programmes (1991-93). New music, particularly new opera, was an abiding passion: he directed TV versions of Tippett’s New Year and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek, and televised Michael Nyman’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. | At the BBC, Dennis held posts as editor, music programmes (1985-88), assistant head of music and arts (1988-91) and head of music programmes (1991-93). New music, particularly new opera, was an abiding passion: he directed TV versions of Tippett’s New Year and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek, and televised Michael Nyman’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. |
| In addition to his work with Gardiner, he forged close working relationships with the conductors Georg Solti and Valery Gergiev. His gift for putting together creative teams was evident in inviting Leslie Megahey to direct Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle: Megahey’s success in bringing out the opera’s dark eroticism led to the magnificent production being awarded the Italia prize in 1989. | In addition to his work with Gardiner, he forged close working relationships with the conductors Georg Solti and Valery Gergiev. His gift for putting together creative teams was evident in inviting Leslie Megahey to direct Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle: Megahey’s success in bringing out the opera’s dark eroticism led to the magnificent production being awarded the Italia prize in 1989. |
| Perhaps Dennis’s closest collaborator was the playwright Michael Frayn. They met in 1972, when Dennis was starting his directing career with a series on writers’ houses – Michael wrote and presented one on Laurence Sterne’s Shandy Hall. The pair went on to make films about four great cities of central Europe: Imagine a City Called Berlin (1975); Vienna: The Mask of Gold (1977), evoking the city’s cultural heyday in 1900; Magic Lantern: Prague (1993), featuring the city’s traditions of magic, illusion and storytelling; and Budapest: Written on Water (1996). Michael says of Dennis: “He was a remarkable man, so intelligent, so quick, so good at making clear what we were trying to say. We could sometimes get very cross with each other, but mostly we worked very easily and fruitfully together. We laughed a lot, and had a great deal of fun.” | Perhaps Dennis’s closest collaborator was the playwright Michael Frayn. They met in 1972, when Dennis was starting his directing career with a series on writers’ houses – Michael wrote and presented one on Laurence Sterne’s Shandy Hall. The pair went on to make films about four great cities of central Europe: Imagine a City Called Berlin (1975); Vienna: The Mask of Gold (1977), evoking the city’s cultural heyday in 1900; Magic Lantern: Prague (1993), featuring the city’s traditions of magic, illusion and storytelling; and Budapest: Written on Water (1996). Michael says of Dennis: “He was a remarkable man, so intelligent, so quick, so good at making clear what we were trying to say. We could sometimes get very cross with each other, but mostly we worked very easily and fruitfully together. We laughed a lot, and had a great deal of fun.” |
| When Dennis went to ENO in 1993, he told Opera magazine that he wanted “to make opera a natural part of the fabric of living as much as any other entertainment like television or movies”. His championing of new music resulted in the commissioning of Turnage’s The Silver Tassie and David Sawyer’s From Morning to Midnight, and productions of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten and Alfred Schnittke’s Life With an Idiot. | When Dennis went to ENO in 1993, he told Opera magazine that he wanted “to make opera a natural part of the fabric of living as much as any other entertainment like television or movies”. His championing of new music resulted in the commissioning of Turnage’s The Silver Tassie and David Sawyer’s From Morning to Midnight, and productions of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten and Alfred Schnittke’s Life With an Idiot. |
| Although an inherited deficit made his tenure at the company one of his less happy experiences, Dennis never lost his long-term vision. It became clear to him that ENO needed a purpose-built opera house. Discovering that he would not get sufficient support for this bold idea, he resigned in 1997. But Dennis remained loyal to ENO, attending first nights whenever he was able, including the production of Wagner’s Mastersingers earlier this year. | Although an inherited deficit made his tenure at the company one of his less happy experiences, Dennis never lost his long-term vision. It became clear to him that ENO needed a purpose-built opera house. Discovering that he would not get sufficient support for this bold idea, he resigned in 1997. But Dennis remained loyal to ENO, attending first nights whenever he was able, including the production of Wagner’s Mastersingers earlier this year. |
| After leaving ENO, Dennis created some of his finest work: the film Janáček’s Gypsy Love (2004), with the tenor Ian Bostridge, and the TV series All the Russias, a history of Russia told through its rich musical legacy. His books included Wandering Jew: The Search for Joseph Roth (2011), an account of the life of the writer. | After leaving ENO, Dennis created some of his finest work: the film Janáček’s Gypsy Love (2004), with the tenor Ian Bostridge, and the TV series All the Russias, a history of Russia told through its rich musical legacy. His books included Wandering Jew: The Search for Joseph Roth (2011), an account of the life of the writer. |
| Dennis was born in Harrow, north-west London. His father, Samuel, and mother Kitty (nee Ostrovsky) were children of immigrants from Russia; Samuel became company secretary for a clothing manufacturer. Dennis went to Haberdashers’ Aske’s boys’ school, Elstree, Hertfordshire. That was where Dennis and I first acted in plays: he was a very convincing, scary Macbeth. We were in the choir together and shared the wonderful experience of performing Bach’s B Minor Mass and the Verdi Requiem. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he gained a first in English, and in 1969 he joined the BBC as a television researcher. | Dennis was born in Harrow, north-west London. His father, Samuel, and mother Kitty (nee Ostrovsky) were children of immigrants from Russia; Samuel became company secretary for a clothing manufacturer. Dennis went to Haberdashers’ Aske’s boys’ school, Elstree, Hertfordshire. That was where Dennis and I first acted in plays: he was a very convincing, scary Macbeth. We were in the choir together and shared the wonderful experience of performing Bach’s B Minor Mass and the Verdi Requiem. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he gained a first in English, and in 1969 he joined the BBC as a television researcher. |
| In recent years he embarked on a new career, in radio: the warmth of his speaking voice made him a natural for the medium. His narration of Janáček Day on Radio 3 in July 2004, marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, combined travelogue, biography, history and musical analysis. One of his finest achievements was The Search for Sepharad (2006), a four-part series for Radio 3. Typically for Dennis, it embraced all aspects of Sephardic culture in Spain. As he tracked the diaspora of Jews from Spain in the late 15th century through Istanbul, Thessaloniki, London, Amsterdam and Jerusalem, his gift for evoking place through words turned radio into a cinema of the mind. The programmes embraced cultural and political history, cookery, philosophy, wine, anecdotes and, as always, music. | In recent years he embarked on a new career, in radio: the warmth of his speaking voice made him a natural for the medium. His narration of Janáček Day on Radio 3 in July 2004, marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, combined travelogue, biography, history and musical analysis. One of his finest achievements was The Search for Sepharad (2006), a four-part series for Radio 3. Typically for Dennis, it embraced all aspects of Sephardic culture in Spain. As he tracked the diaspora of Jews from Spain in the late 15th century through Istanbul, Thessaloniki, London, Amsterdam and Jerusalem, his gift for evoking place through words turned radio into a cinema of the mind. The programmes embraced cultural and political history, cookery, philosophy, wine, anecdotes and, as always, music. |
| Dennis had a big, warm personality. Even those with whom he fought testified to his ability to inspire others. | Dennis had a big, warm personality. Even those with whom he fought testified to his ability to inspire others. |
| In 1972, he married Deborah Cranston, and they had two children, Gabi and Ben. That marriage ended in divorce, and in 1992 Dennis married Sally Groves. She, his children and his sister, Sue, survive him.John Abulafia | In 1972, he married Deborah Cranston, and they had two children, Gabi and Ben. That marriage ended in divorce, and in 1992 Dennis married Sally Groves. She, his children and his sister, Sue, survive him.John Abulafia |
| Humphrey Burton writes: Among the boisterous and bolshy crowd of producers and directors that I took over as head of BBC TV music and arts in 1975, young Dennis Marks already stood out as somebody who knew the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. True, he could be maddeningly argumentative; he was not always a model of tact and he sometimes barged about the room like the proverbial bull. But he was warm-hearted and funny – indeed absolutely brilliant at the department’s 1977 Christmas party, where he donned a kilt and did a wicked impression of John Drummond departing the BBC for the Edinburgh festival. Dennis knew a lot and he talked a lot about what he knew, but the point was that he could deliver: he made well-crafted and deeply interesting programmes across a broad cultural spectrum. | Humphrey Burton writes: Among the boisterous and bolshy crowd of producers and directors that I took over as head of BBC TV music and arts in 1975, young Dennis Marks already stood out as somebody who knew the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. True, he could be maddeningly argumentative; he was not always a model of tact and he sometimes barged about the room like the proverbial bull. But he was warm-hearted and funny – indeed absolutely brilliant at the department’s 1977 Christmas party, where he donned a kilt and did a wicked impression of John Drummond departing the BBC for the Edinburgh festival. Dennis knew a lot and he talked a lot about what he knew, but the point was that he could deliver: he made well-crafted and deeply interesting programmes across a broad cultural spectrum. |
| Colleagues at home – and abroad via the International Musik Zentrum, the organisation for music and media professionals based in Vienna – admired his energy and passion as he planned music shows and series for the BBC in the 1980s. He enjoyed shocking the bourgeoisie and was an unrepentant modernist, relishing his own zany telecast of Nigel Osborne’s impenetrable Glyndebourne opera The Electrification of the Soviet Union (1987). | Colleagues at home – and abroad via the International Musik Zentrum, the organisation for music and media professionals based in Vienna – admired his energy and passion as he planned music shows and series for the BBC in the 1980s. He enjoyed shocking the bourgeoisie and was an unrepentant modernist, relishing his own zany telecast of Nigel Osborne’s impenetrable Glyndebourne opera The Electrification of the Soviet Union (1987). |
| Having been his boss for six years, I later enjoyed working for him as a director of two much more mainstream projects: a three-hour salute to George Gershwin hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas (1987), and a live relay by a BBC camera team of Boris Godunov from the stage of the Kirov Opera to Leningrad, as it then was (1990). What chutzpah to dream up such a project! And how he put together a budget was a mystery and a marvel. The city was tottering towards collapse; there was virtually no food to be had in shops or cafes, but Dennis was a BBC producer who made sure his staff had a hot meal at the end of the day: he authorised the purchase of black-market pizzas at $50 apiece. And there he was next evening in the director’s box at the opera doing live interviews with Gergiev and our British Boris, Robert Lloyd, while the show was relayed back to the UK. | |
| The show was such a success, we repeated the operation two years later with Prokofiev’s War and Peace. But this time Dennis took no chances: he arranged for a lorry-load of tinned food to travel with the cameras. | The show was such a success, we repeated the operation two years later with Prokofiev’s War and Peace. But this time Dennis took no chances: he arranged for a lorry-load of tinned food to travel with the cameras. |
| Dennis was a mensch if ever there was one. | Dennis was a mensch if ever there was one. |
| • Dennis Michael Marks, broadcaster, film-maker and writer, born 2 July 1948; died 2 April 2015 | • Dennis Michael Marks, broadcaster, film-maker and writer, born 2 July 1948; died 2 April 2015 |