[1] Dew was born in 1944 in Santiago de Cuba, but later moved to England at age three.
[2] He studied at the Pratt Institute in New York City where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree, after which he was apprenticed to Walter Felsenstein and Wieland Wagner.
His freelance work from 1977 to 1982 took him to Kiel, Mannheim, Hanover and Basel where he mounted several productions, as well as a Ring cycle and various Mozart operas in Krefeld.
[6] His work there included a cycle of French operas including Gustave Charpentier's Louise and Julien, Meyerbeer's Dinorah, Bloch's Macbeth, Berlioz' Les Troyens, Roussel's Padmâvatî, and Halévy's La Juive.
In 2009, Dew staged Wagner's Lohengrin at the Stadttheater Minden, with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie conducted by Frank Beermann.