Graham Marchant, who has died aged 79 of respiratory problems complicated by Parkinson’s disease, embarked on a varied and influential arts management career in 1973, as administrator of the Actors Company, founded by Ian McKellen and Edward Petherbridge. They wanted actors to be able to make their own decisions, and Graham supported them in UK touring and a season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York (1974).

He went on to manage opera and dance companies, and to lead and shape institutions. These included the Arts Council and the Southbank Centre in London, both of which I worked at with him in the 1980s, and he became a friend and mentor.

The English Opera Group had been founded in 1947 by Benjamin Britten to produce works by himself and other British composers. By 1975 it needed to reinvent itself to present a wider range of operas, operettas and musicals. Graham joined the conductor Steuart Bedford and the director Colin Graham to create a touring company – English Music Theatre – whose enterprising repertory included Britten’s Paul Bunyan, Hans Werner Henze’s La Cubana and Stephen Oliver’s Tom Jones.

In 1978 Lord (George) Harewood, managing director of English National Opera in London, and David Lloyd-Jones, as music director, instituted English National Opera North, based in Leeds and touring other northern cities. Graham joined them as general administrator, recruiting musicians, directors and designers. The company’s opening season included Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila and Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias, signalling the ambition to present opera rarely seen in Britain.

Another ambition was to showcase British works, among them in 1980 both A Village Romeo and Juliet by Frederick Delius, who was born in Bradford, and Richard Rodney Bennett’s The Mines of Sulphur. From 1982 the company was Opera North, independent of ENO, a radical departure anticipating the now accepted principle of regional devolution.

As administrator of the Tricycle theatre, Kilburn, north-west London (1983-84), Graham made it a leading home for new writing; it continues to thrive, now as the Kiln theatre. Other theatre posts in the capital followed at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith (1984), and the Playhouse theatre, Northumberland Avenue (1985-86).

Graham’s appointment as the Arts Council’s first director of arts coordination (1986-89) brought his clear-eyed analysis to many of its trickier problems, helping hosts of arts organisations facing urgent challenges. After Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government abolished the GLC in 1986, management of the Southbank Centre was transferred to the Arts Council, and Graham joined the new Southbank Board as head of site improvement (1989-92). Along with Richard Pulford and Nicholas Snowman, he created a strategy for a centre for music, literature, dance, visual arts, street art, circus, and community art inside and outside.

A passion in his later career was dance, as a director of Ballet Rambert (1991-93) and the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company (1999-2001, and chair 2011-12), and chair of the London Dance Network (1998-99) and National Dance Co-ordinating Committee (2000-03). In particular, he led the Place as general manager and London Contemporary Dance School as school director (1994-98) through one of the organisation’s most difficult periods, following the demise of the London Contemporary Dance theatre. He introduced Richard Alston Dance as the new resident company, and sustained the vision of the school, theatre and resident company working together.

Born in Worcester, Graham was the son of Dorothy (nee Wood) and Leslie Marchant, who served in the RAF and was a removals estimator and bookmaker. From King’s school, Worcester, Graham went to Selwyn College, Cambridge, gaining a degree in English (1966).

He recalled acting the part of St Francis at the age of seven, giving him the ambitions “to do good” and “to make a difference in the world”. His working-class background contributed to his leadership qualities of determination in the teeth of opposition, and his commitment to both artistic quality and an inclusive welcome to all communities as audiences and participants. First steps in arts management came at the Camden festival, then a leading centre of contemporary performance, before he moved on to the Actors Company.

From 1989 Graham did consultancy work for various organisations. In 2009, for what had now become Arts Council England, he produced a report on the Royal Opera House’s aim of establishing a second base in Manchester.

He gave the idea a cautious welcome, though recommended that the ROH work with other opera and ballet companies. In the difficult economic circumstances of the time, this came to nothing: with a certain circularity, half a century after Opera North, ENO is now due to establish its main base in Manchester by 2029. In 2011 Graham was appointed OBE.

From 1983, his partner was Andrew Hochhauser, a barrister, and they married in 2019. Graham became involved with the law as a magistrate (2003-14), chair of the bench at Thames magistrates, a member of the Lord Chancellor’s panel for the selection of magistrates and a mentor for those becoming justices of the peace.

His great passion outside the arts was gardening, in his own home and as a leading light of the Canonbury Square community gardening group in north London. An optimist, he uncomplainingly overcame the challenges that followed his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2007.

He is survived by Andrew and his sisters, Pat and Doreen; his brother, Dave, predeceased him.

• Graham Leslie Marchant, arts administrator, born 2 February 1945; died 28 December 2024

• This article was amended on 12 February 2025. Graham Marchant was the Arts Council’s first director of arts coordination, but not the only one, as an earlier version stated.