Tony Palmer (director)

[2] His work includes over 100 films, ranging from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher (Irish Tour '74) and Frank Zappa (200 Motels), to his classical portraits which include profiles of Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn, John Osborne, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Wagner, Yehudi Menuhin, Julian Lloyd Webber, Carl Orff, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

After a debut at the Zurich Opera House in 1989 with Peter Grimes ("the high point of the season", Neue Zürcher Zeitung), he had a double triumph in Karlsruhe, War and Peace, described as "marvellously suited to the stage and packed with impressive scenes and powerful outbursts of uninhibited activity".

In Saint Petersburg, he directed the first performance in Russia for 80 years of Parsifal, conducted by Valery Gergiev, with Alexey Steblyanko in the title role.

[8] He has also directed in Hamburg, Munich, Augsburg, Savonlinna, Berlin and Helsinki and recently became the first Western director ever to work at the Bolshoi in Moscow.

[9] It is considered a rock classic but, in a 2017 interview with Toronto arts reporter and critic Deirdre Kelly, Palmer called it one of the worst films he ever did.