Peter Brook, whose creative stage work ranged across seven decades on both sides of the Atlantic and earned him a place among the greatest theater directors of the 20th century, died on July 2. He was 97.

He spent years in commercial theater, winning Tony Awards in 1966 and 1971 for “Marat/Sade” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He was equally at home directing Shaw, Beckett, Cocteau, Sartre and Chekhov. He “coaxed brilliance,” The New York Times said, from actors like Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, John Gielgud, Paul Scofield, and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. He staged more than 100 productions from his long and acclaimed career.

However, there was one art form whose rigidities he could not shatter. In 1947, Mr. Brooks was appointed director of productions at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden. His attempts to improve the quality of acting and décor upset some singers and critics, who thought the music had suffered. A production of Strauss’s “Salome” was the last straw. With designs by Salvador Dali, the staging featured gorgeously eccentric effects, but the management drew the line at a plan to divert the Thames and bring an ocean liner onstage. His contract was not renewed.

For Peter Brook, theater was “a whole mirror of human existence, visible and invisible, which should challenge both performers and audiences to reassess the world and their lives.”