Opera North
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Opera NorthSunday, 29 September 2013
All starts with a barely perceptible bass rumble, before Britten’s lower strings begin their queasy glissandi, shifting key signature every few seconds. It’s a wonderful operatic opening, here teased out with deft mystery by conductor Stuart... Read more... |
Siegfried, Opera NorthSunday, 16 June 2013
Newcomers to this ongoing Ring cycle would be wrong to imagine that a series of semi-staged concert performances represent a downsizing, a half-hearted stab at Wagner production. The decision to perform the operas in Leeds’s vast Town Hall was made... Read more... |
Albert Herring, Opera NorthThursday, 16 May 2013
Staging Britten’s third opera in the round in a small performance space of the Howard Assembly Room makes complete sense. Albert Herring’s supporting cast of village grotesques are that little bit more oppressive when they’re singing yards away from... Read more... |
The Firework-Maker's Daughter, Opera North, TouringSunday, 31 March 2013
Perhaps the real heroes of David Bruce and Glyn Maxwell’s new, family-friendly opera are the overhead projectors wielded by puppeteers Steve Tiplady and Sally Todd. They’re put into action as soon as the music starts, shining a charming homemade... Read more... |
La Voix Humaine/Dido and Aeneas, Opera NorthFriday, 15 February 2013
“All we do is talk!” complains the unnamed protagonist in Poulenc’s brilliantly concise one-act opera La Voix Humaine, a faithful setting from late on in the composer’s career of Cocteau’s 1930 play. Banter is what you don’t get; the heroine’s... Read more... |
Otello, Opera NorthThursday, 17 January 2013
The overpowering nastiness of Shakespeare’s source material is offset by Verdi’s sublime, impeccably judged music; this is a wonderful opera with barely a dud moment. Trust the score, get decent singers and an understanding, intelligent conductor,... Read more... |
The Makropulos Case, Opera NorthFriday, 19 October 2012
Has any other composer managed to pack so much into such a compact time span? You’d recognise this score as vintage Janáček after hearing just a few seconds – those yawning gaps between muted tuba and piccolo, the frantic, unforgiving string writing... Read more... |
Faust, Opera NorthMonday, 15 October 2012
You leave Opera North’s new Faust buzzing and bleary-eyed. The production sounds glorious, with terrific singing. It’s also blessed and cursed with a visually astonishing staging which thrills only slightly more than it infuriates. This company’s... Read more... |
Die Walküre, Opera NorthSunday, 17 June 2012
This works as well as it did last year – a no-frills approach to Wagner that helps far more than it hinders. Forget fat ladies wearing Viking helmets. Here the intimacy, the surprising humanity of Die Walküre come to the fore in what seems more and... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Leeds: OverWorlds & UnderWorldsMonday, 21 May 2012
It’s cold, grey and damp. Welcome to Leeds. The city centre has grown more homogenous, less distinctive since I arrived here in the 1980s, but there are still delights to be found.There’s an art gallery with a very decent collection of 20th-century... Read more... |
Carousel, Opera NorthSunday, 06 May 2012
Feeling apprehensive about opera companies tackling Broadway musicals is understandable. So if you’re still wincing at the memory of Leonard Bernstein’s excruciating 1980s recording of West Side Story, relax - director Jo Davies’s intention was to... Read more... |
New lead for Opera North’s CarouselTuesday, 17 April 2012Changing a musical’s leading man just two weeks before the first night might be thought a risky move. But Opera North feel they have a winner with Eric Greene, a rising and powerful American baritone rapidly drafted in to play Billy Bigelow in their... Read more... |
