Youth Opera, black spiders, contemporary Christmas capers, dancing Handel - Opera North's 2025/26 season

Phyllida Lloyd's 2006 production of Peter Grimes returns to Opera North in 2026 marking the 50th anniversary of Britten's death (Photo: Bill Cooper)

Opera North's 2025/26 season opens at the Grand Theatre Leeds with something of a stake in the ground, a declaration of intent. The work being performed is Judith Weir's The Secret of the Black Spider. This will be the UK premiere of the revised, 'Hamburg' version of Weir's opera, and will be the first time an opera by a female composer has been performed on the main stage and the Opera North Youth Company has opened the season.

The season includes two main stage new productions, Handel's Susanna and Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, alongside revivals of Puccini's La Boheme and Britten's Peter Grimes, with David Fennessy's comic extravaganza Pass the Spoon in the Howard Assembly Room, and The Big Opera Mystery for family audiences.

Premiered in 1985 at Canterbury Cathedral and written for young people, Judith Weir's The Secret of the Black Spider blends a folk story from Switzerland with a contemporary news story from Poland, and Weir describes the opera's tone as "somewhere between a video nasty and an Ealing comedy". Conductor and composer Benjamin Gordon revised the work for Hamburg State Opera in 2008/2009, expanding the orchestra, transposing the vocal parts to allow singers to use more of their range and adding new material based on existing motifs. It is this version which will be receiving its UK premiere, conducted by Nicholas Shaw and directed by Rosie Kat.

For all the pastoral and comic delights of Handel's Susanna, the work presents challenges for staging. Whilst there are arias which would not go amiss in ballad opera and the scenes for the Elders are a comic delight, Handel frames the narrative with large-scale dramatic choruses. I have seen stage productions that solve this perceived problem by simply removing many of the choruses! 

For their new production Opera North is collaborating with Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre, their fourth such collaboration. A powerful contemporary reimagining of the biblical story will be directed by Olivia Fuchs, so we can expect something interesting and imaginative, and conducted by Johanna Soller, artistic director of the Munich Bach Choir and Bach Orchestra and the Munich-based baroque ensemble capella sollertia  The choreographer is Phoenix Dance Theatre's artistic director Marcus Jarrell Willis. Anna Dennis is Susannah with Matthew Brook as Chelsias and Claire Lees as Daniel. We recently caught Anna Dennis in the role in the Dunedin Consort's concert performance [see my review].

The other main stage new production is Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, the first time Opera North has performed it in its original Italian. The director is Louisa Muller, a finalist for the 2024 International Opera Awards and her recent productions included Rameau's Platée and Britten's The Turn of the Screw at Garsington Opera. The conducting is shared between Valentina Peleggi and Oliver Rundell, with Hera Hyesang Park as Susanna, Liam James Karai as Figaro, Gabriella Reyes as Countess Almaviva, Hongni Wu as Cherubino, James Newby as Count Almaviva [we caught him at Opera North last October in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, see my review] and dramatic soprano Katherine Broderick will be letter her hair down as Marcellina.

Described as a 'sort of opera', Pass the Spoon, created by composer David Fennessy, artist David Shrigley and director Nicholas Bone, is a darkly comic feast of words (spoken and sung), music and puppetry, made with decidedly adult ingredients. This will be the first major revival since its premiere at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2011 in a production specially conceived for the Howard Assembly Room. Nicholas Bone directs and Garry Walker conducts. 

A major revival this season is Phyllida Lloyd's production of Britten's Peter Grimes, which updates the action to the 1970s. First seen in 2006, with major revivals in 2008 and 2013 [see review in The Guardian], the production this time is in the hands of Karolina Sofulak, who directed Puccini's Manon Lescaut at Opera Holland Park in 2019 [see my review]. Garry Walker conducts with the title role sung by John Findon [last seen as Bothwell in Thea Musgrave's Mary Queen of Scots at ENO, see my review]. Philippa Boyle and Blaise Malaba make their company debuts as Ellen Orford and Hobson. Philippa Boyle was most recently in Mark-Anthony Turnage's Festen at Covent Garden, and we caught her as Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre, alongside the late Ben Thapa, with London Opera Company in 2023 [see my review], and we caught Blaise Malaba as Zuniga in Bizet's Carmen at Covent Garden last year [see my review]

For all its historical setting and romantic gloss, much of the vivid detail in Puccini's La Boheme owes a lot to Puccini's own student days, and the story remains one that can be constantly reinvented. Phyllida Lloyd's production of Puccini's La Boheme successfully captures the contemporary, student feel of the action, setting the work in Paris of the 1960s and using a cast of young singers. For this revival, the director is James Hurley [who was responsible for Opera North's 2023 production of Puccini's La Rondine, see my review] and the conducting is shared between Opera North's music director Garry Walker and Catriona Beveridge. Two casts feature many young singers making their Opera North debuts. 

Sharing the role of Mimì are Chilean soprano Isabela Díaz and American Olivia Boen. Italian tenor Anthony Ciaramitaro and British-American Joshua Blue take on the role of Rodolfo, while the Armenian baritone Grisha Martirosyan and Korean Josef Jeongmeen Ahn sing Marcello. Seán Boylan is Schaunard, Elin Pritchard and Katie Bird sing Musetta.

For young opera-goers there is The Big Opera Mystery, building on the success of the company's The Big Opera Adventure last year. Written and directed by Jonathan Ainscough, this new musical extravaganza features live music from the Orchestra of Opera North as mini sleuths are invited to put their crime-solving skills to the test as they try to catch an expert thief, all to the accompaniment of some amazing operatic arias.

Before the 2025/26 season starts, Opera North's new five-year partnership with Nevill Holt Festival begins with a new production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. This new partnership has been set up with the shared ambition to maximise opportunities for performers and creatives, particularly those at the start of their careers in opera. A new Opera North production for the 2026 Festival will be announced later this year. Opera North will also be running a project with Streetwise Opera in Nottingham as part of the initiative Reimagining the Classics. Working with their weekly opera group which comprises homeless people and those recently out of homelessness, Streetwise Opera will be creating a short performance taking The Marriage of Figaro as their inspiration. This will be performed on stage at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham with the Orchestra of Opera North and members of the Chorus.

The Orchestra of Opera North will be contributing to the Kirklees Concert Season in Huddersfield and Dewsbury, performing in outdoor concerts in Leeds’ Millennium Square, and making regular appearances at festivals such as Buxton, Ryedale and Ripon. And the company's popular programme of films with live scores continues with Amadeus, Miloš Forman’s 1984 film exploring the possible rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The following day, a scare is in the air with Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960s film Psycho – the perfect way to mark Halloween. 

Full details from Opera North's website.

Seeking professional Global Majority musicians and composers based in the North of England and the Midlands: Opera North's Resonance residency programme 2024/25

Jasdeep Singh Degun performing Arya: concerto for sitar and orchestra with Orchestra of Opera North (Photo Justin Slee)

Opera North's Resonance residency programme was launched in 2017 to offer funding, space, time and technical support to professional Global Majority musicians and composers based in the North of England and the Midlands. Now the company is seeking applications from music creators from the Global Majority working in any genre for the next iteration of the programme. In 2024-25, six successful artists will be invited into Opera North’s home in Leeds to develop new ideas, collaborate with performers from other disciplines, and take their work in new directions. Each artist will receive up to a week of free rehearsal space in central Leeds between November 2024 and March 2025, a grant of up to £4,000 to cover fees for those involved and other costs, and support and advice from technicians, producers and other specialists. There are also options for a work in progress performance and a short film to document the project.

Many Resonance alumni have continued to work with Opera North. Music Director on the inaugural Resonance residency, Jasdeep Singh Degun, became the company’s first Artist-in Residence in 2022. His work with Opera North has included composing Arya, a sitar concerto for the Orchestra of Opera North, and being the composer and co-Music Director on the award-winning opera Orpheus. [see my 2023 interview with Jasdeep]. 2019 Resonance artist Nishla Smith is now the Programmer for the Howard Assembly Room and, earlier this year, Ladies of Midnight Blue performed A Love Revolution, the family-friendly show they had devised during their 2022 residency, on the Howard Assembly Room stage.

To apply, see the form on the Opera North website.

A Leeds Songbook and a showcase performance: Leeds Lieder Young Artists 2024

Leeds Lieder Young Artists 2024 at Howard Assembly Room

Composers & Poets Forum Showcase: A Leeds Songbook; Leeds Lieder Festival at Leeds Minster
Reviewed 17 April 2024

Young Artists Showcase: Leeds Lieder Festival at Howard Assembly Room
Reviewed 19 April 2024

First a programme of specially written new song and then a chance to shine in their chosen repertoire, and for us to experience some fine young voices and performers really stretching themselves.

Leeds Lieder Festival certainly keeps its Young Artists busy. They arrived in Leeds on Sunday not only have they been taking part in masterclasses and a final showcase performance at Opera North's Howard Assembly Room on 19 April 2024 when each duo performed their own selection of songs, but on 17 April 2024 at Leeds Minster they presented this year's instalment of A Leeds Songbook.

The Composers & Poets Forum Showcase at Leeds Minster on 17 April featured ten new songs by student composers collaborating with local poets to create ten further contributions to A Leeds Songbook. Each song was written for the Young Artist duo that performed it. Before each song, the poet read their words to give us more of an idea of content.

A day at Leeds Lieder Festival: Fauré, Boulanger, Mahler and more

Gabriel Fauré by John Singer Sargent, 1889

Lecture recital: Gabriel Fauré and his mélodies; Graham Johnson, Sarah Fox, Florian Störtz; Leeds Lieder Festival at The Venue, Leeds Conservatoire
Gabriel Fauré, Lili Boulanger, Mahler, Roger Quilter, Muriel Herbert; James Gilchrist, Anna Tilbrook; Leeds Lieder Festival at The Venue, Leeds Conservatoire
Reviewed 18 April 2024

A day of French song with a focus on Fauré, with Graham Johnson making us love the composer's late period, and James Gilchrist in fine form, from elegant Fauré to perfumed Boulanger, Mahler in comic mode and Roger Quilter with his heart on his sleeve

Thursday 18 April was A Day of French Song at Leeds Lieder Festival. In the morning the festival's Young Artists had a public masterclass with soprano Dame Felicity Lott concentrating on French repertoire, then at lunchtime pianist Graham Johnson was joined by soprano Sarah Fox and baritone Florian Störtz for a lecture recital on Gabriel Fauré and his mélodies, and Johnson went on join the Young Artists for a further masterclass in the afternoon. The evening recital was given by tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Anna Tilbrook with songs by Fauré and Lili Boulanger alongside those of Mahler, Roger Quilter and Muriel Herbert. Though it was perhaps unfortunate that Johnson and Gilchrist's choice of Fauré songs overlapped rather. Impressively, the whole day was live-streamed and is available to view on the festival's YouTube channel.

For the lunchtime lecture recital in The Venue, Leeds Conservatoire's handsome recital hall, Graham Johnson took an historical approach to Fauré and his mélodies (109 of them, written between 1861 and 1921), beginning with his first surviving song and working through to his last song cycle, dividing the composer's output into periods each illustrated with songs from Sarah Fox and Florian Störtz. But Johnson also explained why the songs were like they are, what makes Fauré so distinctive. Johnson deftly interwove speech and song, moving from piano to lectern and back, and his delivery was impressively succinct yet engaging and informative, with a nice ear for a well-turned, memorable phrase. By the end we felt we understood Fauré's song output a lot more and wanted to explore further, particularly the late period about which Johnson was passionate.

Engaging the audience: James Newby and Joseph Middleton in a folk-inspired programme at a cool Leeds café/bar

Leeds Lieder 2024 - Joseph Middleton, James Newby - Through the Noise at Hyde Park Book Club

Matyas Seiber, John Jacob Niles, Thomas Traill, Joseph Suder, Percy Grainger, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Ravel: Cinq Mélodies populaires grecques, Mahler: Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen; James Newby, Joseph Middleton; Leeds Lieder & Through the Noise at Hyde Park Book Club
17 April 2024

A new collaboration sees Leeds Lieder at a cool café/bar with an engaging and beautifully sung programme of songs inspired by folk-music

A former fuel storage tank is not the usual venue for a song recital, but Hyde Park Book Club is no usual venue and last night's recital there (17 April 2024) by baritone James Newby and pianist Joseph Middleton was a collaboration between Leeds Lieder (of which Middleton is the artistic director) and Through the Noise, the organisation that promotes its concerts, noisenights, via a distinctive crowdfunding model. The recital was all of folk-inspired music, from Matyas Seiber, John Jacob Niles, Thomas Traill, Joseph Suder, Percy Grainger, Vaughan Williams and Britten, plus Ravel's Cinq Mélodies populaires grecques and Mahler's Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen.

The room was small, and needed discreet amplification to provide the right sort of acoustic, but this was sensitively and naturally done. There was a magnificent grand piano, lent for the occasion and not what you usually expect to find in the basement of a café/bar! Hyde Park Book Club is a café, bar and venue based in a former petrol station, hence the former fuel storage tank. A friendly and casual upstairs bar provided refreshment and sustenance before the event and somewhere to chat to the performers afterwards.

Leeds Lieder 2024 - James Newby - Through the Noise at Hyde Park Book Club
(Photo: Tom Arber)

The event was sold out, so there was a packed, standing audience. Sight-lines were at a premium but I am assured that even from the back the sound was good and throughout the evening James Newby's diction was superb, we heard every word and if you are doing a programme inspired by folk-music then you need that. Newby built on the casual atmosphere, chatting to the audience in a way that was informative, yet entertainingly self-deprecating; I have never heard the word 'wanky' used as an adjective (to describe his explanation of the raison d'etre of the programme) on the concert platform before!

Song belongs to us all and should be available to all: artistic director, Joseph Middleton on Leeds Lieder's boldest and most colourful festival yet

Discovering Lieder - Leeds Lieder 2023 (Photo: Ed Robinson)

Leeds Lieder is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year whilst co-incidentally, artistic director Joseph Middleton also celebrates 10 years in post. This year's Leeds Lieder Festival, On Wings of Song, runs from 13 to 21 April 2024 with around 30 events at venues as diverse as the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds Conservatoire, Leeds Minster, Pudsey Town Hall, the Hyde Park Book Club and the Sikh Centre.

Joseph Middleton, artistic director of Leeds Lieder

Joseph explains that quite a lot has changed over the years. The festival began as a biennial event, with a guest artistic director, and lasted two or three days. Early on, the festival moved to being annual and now is a nine-day event, but Leeds Lieder also now presents a year-round programme in collaboration with partners like Opera North and the Leeds Conservatoire. They have also grown their Young Artists Programme and for the 2024 festival, 20 young artists will be coming for a week to study with artists such as Sir Thomas Allen, Dame Felicity Lott, Graham Johnson, James Gilchrist, Anna Tilbrook and Benjamin Appl, as well as having new works written for them as part of their participation in the Composers & Poets Forum, performing brand new songs which will be the culmination of festival's creative song-writing project, 'A Leeds Songbook'. The festival's school work has expanded too, and this year they will be teaching around 1000 children about the joys of song, and the culmination of this is a concert in Pudsey Town Hall. And everything this year will be live-streamed; last year they reached a streaming audience of 200,000.

What is being performed has changed too, as the importance of the text has led to some interesting cultural exchanges. The festival commissions widely and they think about who to ask, to present diverse voices. This year, Tansy Davies has written a new song cycle, The Ice Core Sample Says, with poems by Nick Drake (from his collection, The Farewell Glacier), to be premiered by mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska and pianist Joseph Middleton at the Howard Assembly Room. The festival's second commission is being premiered in a rather more intriguing venue, the Sikh Centre. Soprano Nina Kanter, baritone Oscar Castellino and pianist Keval Shah will be premiering Cheryl Frances-Hoad's Punjabi Proverbs, in an evening that celebrates the cross-cultural art of British and Indian composers and poets, with Indian composers heard setting English poems, alongside English song settings of Indian poetry. The event is a collaboration with South Asian Arts UK.

UK-based arts writer, Tony Cooper, offers a preview of Northern Opera Group’s 8th Annual Leeds Opera Festival which includes a brand-new opera on Sherlock Holmes.

Running from 17 August to 8 September 2024, the 8th Annual Leeds Opera Festival, programmed by Northern Opera Group, offers audiences a blend of world premières alongside exciting collaborations designed for the whole community. The festival’s renowned for combining new productions of rare operas peppered by  a wide programme of talks, panel discussions, workshops and other events across the late August Bank Holiday weekend.  

For instance, the 2023 festival featured the UK première of Robert Rodriguez’ opera Frida alongside a collaboration with the Northern School of Contemporary Dance on Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires in a healthy and inspiring four-week programme of opera and music inspired by Latin America. Other recent productions include Charles Villiers Stanford’s Much Ado About Nothing (2019) and Handel’s Silla (2022).  

And reaching out to communities in Leeds and Bradford, Northern Opera Group is committed in enabling people of all ages and abilities to take part in opera with an annual community opera engaging participants and family audiences in both these important and culturally fired-up northern towns. Recent productions have included César Cui’s Little Red Riding Hood (2022) and David Parry’s Pied Piper of Hamelin (2024). 

Piazzolla: Maria de Buenos Aires - Leeds Opera Festival 2023 (Photo: Rhian Hughes)

And a major new commission this year sees the world’s first-ever opera adaptation surrounding the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes. Entitled Sherlock Holmes and The Sign of Four, the opera’s directed by David Ward, written by award-winning composer Lliam Paterson (also responsible for the libretto) and conducted by Ellie Slorach with stage design by Caitlin Mawhinney and lighting by Charly Dunford. Audiences can, therefore, well expect a musical journey through the iconic tale bringing a fresh perspective to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic work. 

The outstanding bass Edward Hawkins leads a strong cast in the title-role working alongside tenor David Horton as Watson while soprano Ellen Mawhinney is cast in the role of Mary and bass Trevor Eliot Bowes as Jonathan Small. The cast is further strengthened by Katy Thomson (Mrs Hudson), Dominic Mattos (Thaddeus Sholto) and Zahid Siddiqui (Athelney Jones). 

Complementing the mysteries and intrigue of Mr Holmes’ shenanigans an interactive mystery show will tour West Yorkshire libraries targeted for children from 8 to12 years old. Entitled The Book of Eternity the show will call at over 20 libraries across Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield and Kirklees offering an immersive experience which promises to bring the magic of opera to diverse communities across the region which will include creative workshops with primary school pupils in Leeds. The story is written by leading children’s mystery author, Clare Povey. 

The festival will also feature a Musical Escape Room which combines the thrill of opera with the immersive challenges of an escape room experience. This collaboration with a local Escape Room company promises a unique and entertaining fusion of music and mystery that would, I’m sure, impress the famous deerstalker detective. 

A new direction this year is the introduction of the festival’s first guest artistic director, a move designed to diversify artistic leadership and support the next generation of opera leaders. And as part of its wider commitment to fostering a more equitable and sustainable opera community, Northern Opera Group has also become one of the only companies to establish a house agreement with Equity. This agreement solidifies the company’s long-standing commitment to appropriate levels of pay and positive working conditions for artists. 

The festival is supported by Arts Council England, International Music and Art Foundation, Postlethwaite Music Foundation, RVW Trust, Marchus Trust, Leeds Community Foundation, Sir Keith Howard Foundation and Leeds City Council. 

For more information check out www.northernoperagroup.co.uk 

On Wings of Song: Leeds Lieder celebrates 20 years of song in Leeds

After a year which included both a potentially catastrophic funding crisis (thanks to Arts Council England) and a record number of first time concert attendees, Leeds Lieder plans to celebrate its 20th anniversary in style in 2024. 

Running from 13 to 21 April 2024, the main recital venues will be Opera North’s Howard Assembly Room and Leeds Conservatoire’s The Venue, but there will also be events at Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds Sikh Centre, Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds Minster and, for the culmination concerts of the award-winning education projects, Pudsey Civic Hall.

A strong line-up of performers includes Roderick Williams, Benjamin Appl, Carolyn Sampson, Fleur Barron, James Gilchrist, Nikola Hillebrand, Ema Nikolovska, James Newby, Roger Vignoles, Graham Johnson and festival director Joseph Middleton, whilst Dame Felicity Lott and Sir Thomas Allen lead the Young Artist masterclasses. 

Festival highlights include a Schubertiade 20th Anniversary Gala, concerts building on the success of last year's Leeds Songbook by bringing together 10 Leeds poets with 10 postgraduate composers to write relevant responses to everyday life in Leeds, a community-led performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria in Leeds Minster, an evening recital in Leeds iconic Hyde Park Book Club promoted alongside Through the Noise; and a musical walking trail in the ruins of Kirkstall Abbey. 

Leeds Lieder commissions in 2024 include world premières of a new collection of miniatures by Cheryl Frances Hoad setting Punjabi proverbs to be performed in Leeds Sikh Centre by Nina Kanter, faculty member at Chennai Music Conservatory, Oscar Castellino, British-Indian pianist, Keval Shah, and Tansy Davies’s Thunder: Perfect Mind written for Ema Nikolovska and Joseph Middleton. 

Full details from the Leeds Lieder website.

Steeping listeners in Indian classical music without them knowing it: sitar player Jasdeep Singh Degun

Jasdeep Singh Degun

Jasdeep Singh Degun's tour of Anomaly featuring music from his acclaimed Real World Records debut disc opens on 17 May 2023 at the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds and continues to Norwich, Nottingham, Southampton, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Manchester and Liverpool [see website for details]. We met up earlier this month, whilst he was in London (the previous day he had been on BBC Radio 3's In Tune) to chat about Anomaly, and working with both Western classical and Indian classical musics.

Jasdeep is a sitar player and composer whose work in Indian classical music has crossed over into Western classical in such projects as Arya, his 2020 concerto for sitar written for Opera North, and for Opera North's Orpheus project which combined Monteverdi's opera with Indian classical music and for which Jasdeep was the co-musical director (with Lawrence Cummings).

Born in Leeds to Punjabi parents who came to the UK in the 1980s, in person, Jasdeep embodies this dual heritage, he wears a turban yet speaks with a distinct Leeds accent. At one point during our interview he comments that he is just a 'random guy from Leeds', he does not come from a musical family, his involvement in Indian classical music began at the local community centre and he only started concentrating on studying the sitar when he was in his teens, which is relatively late. He studied sitar with Ustad Dharambir Singh MBE, his teacher.

Jasdeep Singh Degun performing Arya: concerto for sitar and orchestra with Orchestra of Opera North (Photo Justin Slee)

Touches of Sweet Harmony: Leeds Lieder's 2023 festival

This year's Leeds Lieder Festival is the biggest ever, running from 9 to 17 June 2023 having expanded from four to nine days. Under artistic director Joseph Middleton, guest of honour Dame Janet Baker is joined by performers including Véronique Gens, Sarah Connolly,  Mark Padmore, Louise Alder, Christine Rice, Peter Brathwaite, James Newby,  Kate Royal, Ailish Tynan, Graham Johnson, Julius Drake, and Susan Manoff.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, Graham Johnson will be giving a lecture recital on the great song cycle with tenor Ben Johnson. The festival has commissioned Errollyn Wallen to compose a song cycle for voice and piano, Night Thoughts, which will be performed by the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton as part of the festival’s closing gala.

A new initiative for 2023 is the introduction of A Leeds Songbook – twelve composers from the UK’s leading conservatoires and Northern universities have been paired with Leeds-based poets to create songs that will tell unique stories about the people of Leeds. These new songs will be performed in concert by the 2023 Leeds Lieder Young Artists, postgraduate singers and pianists drawn from across the UK, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and South East Asia.

An important strand in each festival is the Young Artists Programme. This year, twenty-four outstanding Young Artists will participate in a series of masterclasses, and perform to festival audiences at a showcase concert, a study event led by Dr Katy Hamilton and at the late-night Lieder Lounge in the informal setting of Leeds Conservatoire’s rooftop bar.

The popular Bring and Sing! event is inviting amateur singers to come together to perform Mozart’s Requiem at Leeds Minster alongside the Young Artists, and for the first time Leeds Lieder will incorporate its two award-winning Learning and Participation projects, Living Lieder and Discovering Lieder, into the main festival with two school concerts featuring nearly 1000 children at Pudsey Civic Hall.

The musical walking trail SongPath returns this year to the rich natural setting of the 900-year-old ruins of Kirkstall Abbey, led by singers Jess Dandy and Joanna Harries, and the Festival sees a collaboration with members of the Orchestra of Opera North, their Head of Music, David Cowan, and tenor Nick Pritchard in a recital of works by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Full details from the Leeds Lieder website.

Frida, Maria & co: Leeds Opera Festival goes Latin American for 2023

There is a Latin American theme to the 2023 Leeds Opera Festival. Taking place in over a dozen venues across Leeds and organised by Northern Opera Group, this year's festival runs from 19 August to 10 September 2023 and features the UK premiere of Robert Rodriguez' opera Frida, about the artist Frida Kahlo, and a new production of Astor Piazzolla's Maria de Buenos Aires.

Since its premiere in 1991, Robert Rodriguez' opera Frida has been enormously successful in the USA, but is only now making its way to the UK. It was commissioned by the American Music Theater Festival and tells the life story of the artist Frida Kahlo. The Leeds Opera Festival production will be directed by Francesca Murray-Fuentes and conducted by Odaline de la Martinez, and the cast includes Parvathi Subbiah, Jacobo Ochoa, and Julia Merino.

Born in San Antonio, Texas, Robert Xavier Rodriguez' teachers have included Nadia Boulanger, Jacob Druckman, Bruno Maderna and Elliott Carter. Rodriguez describes Frida's idiom as "in the Gershwin, Sondheim, Kurt Weill tradition of dissolving the barriers and extending the common ground between opera and musical theater".

A new production of Piazzolla's tango operita, Maria de Buenos Aires, will be given in collaboration with the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, choreographed & directed by Carlos Pons Guerra and conducted by Natalia Luis-Bassa.

A new pop-up opera by composer Jose Puello and writer Zodwa Nyoni will be touring venues across Leeds and surrounding areas. The opera is being developed with young people from primary schools in Leeds who are taking part in workshops on traditional Latin American folk stories and songs.

Additionally, there is a programme of talks, workshops and recitals, including works by Latin American female composers from Helen Glaisher Hernandez and Lorena Paz Nieto, a concert from Cuban guitarist Ahmed Dickinson, and a rare UK appearance from Spanish pianist Jose Luis Nieto.

Full details from the festival website.

Keenly dramatic: Puccini's Tosca at Opera North with a feisty Tosca, an unexpected Cavaradossi and a remarkable Scarpia

Puccini: Tosca - Robert Hayward - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Puccini: Tosca; Giselle Allen, Andrés Presno, Robert Hayward, director: Edward Dick, conductor: Garry Walker; Opera North at the Grand Theatre, Leeds

A modern, film-noir take on Puccini's classic proves to be gripping theatre, with a trio of terrific performances from the leads

Edward Dick's production of Puccini's Tosca for Opera North debuted in 2018 with Giselle Allen (Tosca), Robert Hayward (Scarpia) and the late Rafael Rojas (Cavaradossi). The production returned to the Grand Theatre, Leeds in January 2023 with Giselle Allen and Robert Hayward returning to their roles and Mykhailo Malafii as Cavaradossi (in March, Magdalena Molendowska and Andrés Presno were due to take over as Tosca and Cavaradossi).

I caught the performance at the Grand Theatre on 28 February 2023; Malafii was ill and Cavaradossi was sung by Andrés Presno. Garry Walker conducted, with Callum Thorpe as Angelotti, Matthew Stiff as the Sacristan, Alex Banfield as Spoleta, and Richard Mosley-Evans as Sciarrone. Sets were by Tom Scutt, costumes by Fotini Dimou, and lighting was by Lee Curran.

Scutt's semi-permanent setting for the opera was somewhat abstract yet highly functional, effectively providing all the spaces needed for the mechanics of the plot. Act One featured a dome (with a hole at the centre) with one panel missing. This was what Cavaradossi was painting, the final panel of his Magdalene for the dome, her eyes. The missing panel in the ceiling suggested something off-kilter elsewhere. The stage was surrounded by columns of lights and a semi-circle of altars. The acting area was raised, but leaving a passageway around the altars so a young altar girl could walk around and light them, something that happened both in Acts One and Act Two. 

Puccini: Tosca - Robert Hayward - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Opera North's 2023 Resonance residences, genres from jazz and R&B to ambient, and rooted in traditional music from across Africa and Asia

Artists taking part in Opera North's Resonance residencies 2023

Opera North has announced the latest round of Resonance residences, its programme for music-makers of colour working in all genres. Over the next two months, Rob Green, Ni Maxine, Babak Mirsalari, Madeline Shann, Kaviraj Singh and Marco Woolf will each spend a week at Opera North's central Leeds base, developing new ideas in workshops and work-in-progress performances. 

2023 marks the scheme's sixth year and several alumni have gone on to major commissions for Opera North’s mainstage; sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun is now the company’s artist in residence, with credits as composer, co-music director and soloist on last year’s cross-cultural opera Orpheus, whilst rapper and playwright Testament developed his acclaimed Orpheus in the Record Shop. 

• Rob Green is a singer-songwriter from Nottingham who has been writing, performing and touring his music for over 10 years. In his residency he will blend spoken word and music to flow between tracks, and work with Leeds-based filmmakers and videographers to create a single-take visual document of his performance of acoustic songs exploring identity, masculinity and mental wellbeing.
• Neo-jazz singer Ni Maxine will use Resonance to continue work on The Life Movement, her “space for expression and storytelling through music”. She will draw on her West African heritage, the legacy of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, and the power of storytelling in song.
• Babak Mirsalari is an Iranian composer, collaborator and performer, working in genres as varied as contemporary and nu-jazz, progressive electronica, world fusion, post-rock and spacey ambient. He plans to bring his experience as an Iranian immigrant to bear upon his Resonance residency, using south-western Iranian rhythms to reflect on his childhood; his transition from Iran to northern England’s music scene; his years spent in the “maze” of Home Office bureaucracy in the UK; and finally the beautiful Yorkshire landscapes surrounding his new home in Hebden Bridge.
• Madeline Shann works across music, dance, theatre, screen and live art, with a long cv of collaborations in each. "For the Resonance residency I will be returning to my collaboration with Xavier in a new project called Flood the Field”, says Madeline. “It’ll be an opportunity for me to branch out from my usual songwriting practice, and delve deep into the world of voice and sound, experimenting with layers, textures, structure and duration."
• Santoor (hammered dulcimer) player and singer Kaviraj Singh shone among a stellar ensemble as the ferryman Charon/Caronte in Opera North and SAA-uk’s Orpheus in 2022. The only professional practitioner in the UK to combine santoor and vocals, he is also a trained sound engineer, and for Resonance he plans to bring all these skills together in developing a narrative about migration and nature.
• Malawi-born, Manchester-based singer-songwriter, composer, and storyteller Marco Woolf grew up listening to his elders’ folk tales, and as a performer he weaves improvised stories and poetry into his sets. During his residency, Marco and collaborators will spend one day each concentrating on storytelling, music and dance, before two days with a dramaturg to help develop the narrative and creative language.

Full details from the Opera North website

A dislike of plastic elves and glowing Santas spewing out rainbow snowmen in every direction

Martin Green

Composer (and one-third of the innovative folk band, Lau) Martin Green has created two new works for Opera North exploring the meanings behind our festival rituals. Green is a self-confessed Christmas curmudgeon, "I'm not what I’d call a Christmas person", he admits. "I love people, music, doing stuff — but do I love Christmas? I’m not sure", and his two new works explore different sides to the festival.

At Harewood House, his new sound installation Tannenbaum takes an old tune and explores the way it is used for the carol, O Tannenbaum (O Christmas Tree) and The Red Flag, using recordings from a folk session at the Waverley Bar in Edinburgh. The installation can be experienced as part of Harewood House's Long Live the Christmas Tree display.

Then on 17 December 2022 at the Howard Assembly Room (and 22 December at Sage Gateshead), Green's Lighting the Dark knits together folk tunes, songs and carols with the story of a spiritual journey from despair in the queue at Argos to a blazing, brass-led epiphany about the meaning of the season and its traditions. To perform it, Green will be joined by friends including Irish fiddle player Ultan O’Brien of the band Slow Moving Clouds and a brass trio comprising composer and improviser Laura Jurd (trumpet);, Danielle Price (tuba), and the brilliant young Glaswegian trombonist Anoushka Nanguy.

Full details from Opera North's website.

Orpheus at Opera North: greater than the sum of its parts

Orpheus - Shahbaz Hussain on tabla, RN Prakash on ghatam, Mark Wagstaff on percussion, Sergio Bucheli on theorbo, Jasdeep Singh Degun on sitar and Andrew Long on violin - Opera North (Photo Tristram Kenton)a

Claudio Monteverdi and Jasdeep Singh Degun: Orpheus - Opera North
Reviewed 20 October 2022 by Edward Lambert

Composer Edward Lambert enjoys the way Western and Indian traditions combine in Opera North's innovative new staging

The myth of Orpheus was fundamental to the history of early opera: Peri’s Euridice is the earliest surviving opera and its performance in Florence in 1600 was attended by the Duke of Mantua - Monteverdi’s employer - and Alessandro Striggio, who would write the libretto for Monteverdi’s opera of 1607. The attraction of the myth, of course, was that the story was widely known and understood; Orpheus, as a musical practitioner, becomes a parable for the genre of opera itself, a union of words and music which gives voice to this drama about love and loss. No wonder composers have struggled with the myth’s ending, sometimes tragic, sometimes happy, and sometimes, as with Monteverdi’s later drafts, somewhere in between. 

And how appropriate that Opera North and South Asian Arts UK (also Leeds-based) should choose the love of Orpheus and Eurydice to be the subject of a collaboration between them, one which turned out to be a true marriage of musical styles. ‘Monteverdi reimagined’, indeed. The production’s point of departure is the lovers’ wedding party in a suburban back garden sumptuously created by Leslie Travers. The sun is shining, and the musicians sit arrayed in the flower beds, Western and Indian instruments intermingled. The production by Anna Himali Howard is as restrained as the musical pace, intimate and tender, allowing the beauty of it all to speak for itself. Laurence Cummings presides discretely from the harpsichord, while the Indian classical musicians perform the music of Jasdeep Singh Degun, who directs from the sitar. 

Orpheus - Dean Robinson as Pluto and Chandra Chakraborty as Proserpina - Opera North (Photo Tristram Kenton)

Thus, it was that early baroque and Indian classical music came to be heard cheek by jowl. Right from the start, the role of La Musica was divided between Deepa Nair Rasiya and Amy Freston singing in their respective musical styles. Likewise, nymphs and shepherds were taken by the operatic quartet of Claire Lees, Frances Gregory, Xavier Hetherington and Simon Grange with contrasting contributions from their Asian counterparts, Sanchita Pal, Chiranjeeb Chakraborty and Vijay Rajput - the latter two paired as shepherds who entertained us in an ornament competition.  If early baroque opera delights in the contrast between recitative and aria, then in this Orpheus we are treated to even greater contrasts of cultural styles, the western gently extroverted alternating with the Indian, soft and introverted. Sometimes they tellingly combine or cross-fertilize each other.

DARE Art Prize: call for applications for this prize for collaboration between the arts and sciences

Samuel Hertz performing Gunslinger, his transcription of a glacier melting, with musicians Kieran Blyth and Wilfred Amis in the Howard Assembly Room (Photo Opera North)

The fourth iteration of the DARE Art Prize is calling for entries. Awarded by the University of Leeds and Opera North in association with the National Science and Media Museum and The Tetley, the prize is awarded to and artist with an original proposal for creative works in partnership with leading scientists at the University of Leeds. 

The three past winners have interacted both with the university's scientific work and musicians from Opera North in a surprising variety of ways.

• Composer and inaugural Prize winner Samuel Hertz worked with low-frequency infrasound, delving into climatology, the environment and the paranormal, with outcomes including a musical transcription of a glacier melting.  I chatted to Samuel in 2017 when he was working on the project, see my interview.
• Collaborating with staff in the University's School of Psychology, artist and researcher Anna Ridler (2018-19) taught a machine to draw, and employed an algorithm to process musical scores. 
• Working remotely with scientists at the University’s BioDAR insect radar unit, singers and music staff at Opera North, and objects in the collection of the National Science and Media Museum, poet and visual artist Redell Olsen (2020-21) produced a web of multimedia works, including a Handel opera restaged for moths. 

The closing date for applications is 31 March 2022, full details from the Opera North website.

Leeds Lieder 2022: Song Illuminated

The Leeds Lieder Festival 2022 runs from Thursday 28 April to Sunday 1 May 2022; four days of song curated by artistic director Joseph Middleton under the title Song Illuminated, exploring how song illuminates our lives. With all of the concerts taking place at the Howard Assembly Room.

Dorothea Röschmann, soprano, opens the festival with Joseph Middleton in Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn and music by Wolf and Wagner. Ian Bostridge, tenor, and Dame Imogen Cooper will be performing Schubert's later masterpiece, Schwanengesang, whilst Robin Tritschler, tenor, is joined by pianist Christopher Glynn for a recital that has moonlight illuminating all the songs. Louise Alder, soprano, joins Middleton to bring the festival to a close with a recital of songs ranging from Fauré to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

But there is much more to the festival than this. There are lunchtime recitals in partnership with Samling Institute, BBC New Generation Artists and Kathleen Ferrier Awards, with recitals from Jess Dandy, contralto and Martin Roscoe, piano, Helen Charlston, mezzo-soprano and Ilan Kurtser, piano, and Konstantin Krimmel, baritone and Joseph Middleton in Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin, plus a new work by Jonathan Dove, Man, Woman, Child, a duet cycle that is receiving its first performance outside London with Shakira Tsindos mezzo-soprano, Dominic Sedgwick baritone, and Ian Tindale piano. The Leeds Lieder 2022 Young Artists will be taking part in masterclasses and performing in a showcase concert.

Late evening recitals include The Revolution Smells of Jasmine, an homage to protest music in the Americas from female artists and composers with Wallis Giunta, mezzo-soprano, Sean Shibe, guitar, and Adam Walker, flute, with music ranging from Ariel Ramirez to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, plus Abel Meeropol's Strange Fruit. Ruby Hughes, soprano and Joseph Middleton in music by Errollyn Wallen and Mahler, plus Deborah Pritchard's new song cycle, The World.

The mental health initiative SongPath will be running a musical walking trail around St Aidan's RSPB Nature Reserve, and Jess Dandy's recital is designed to complement this event.

Full details from the Leeds Lieder website.

I've just kept going: David Greed, the leader of Opera North's orchestra since its inception in 1978 is finally stepping down

Leader of the Orchestra of Opera North David Greed performing in Huddersfield Town Hall (Photo Justin Slee)

After Opera North's performances of Wagner's Parsifal this Summer, the leader of the orchestra, David Greed, will be retiring. An event made particularly notable by the fact that Greed has performed in that role since the orchestra's inception in 1978, making him the longest-serving orchestral leader in Europe.

Referring to his long service, Greed said "I've just kept going" and referred to his 44 years in post as "a massive accidental record of some sort". As well as leading the orchestra in its regular programme, he will be taking part in two special events. As part of the orchestra's Kirklees Concert Season, Greed will be the soloist in Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto, conducted by Anthony Hermus, in a programme on 27 February 2022 that also includes music by Galina Ustvolskaya (one of Shostakovich's pupils) and Bartók. Further details from the Opera North website.

Then on 16 March 2022 at Dewsbury Town Hall, Greed will be joined by joined by friends and colleagues for music and reminiscence in a lunchtime farewell concert. Commenting about the location of the concert, Greed explained, "My history with Dewsbury is almost as long as my time at Opera North. It’s another thing that I’m really going to miss. In the mid-80s a Dewsbury concert series was set up by the Kirklees Music Officer, the late Aidan Plender, and for the first few years almost every concert was me and group called Capricci. We started in a modest room that held 50 or 60, but eventually the crowds built so we had to move into the main hall, which was a major triumph." Details from the Opera North website.

Handel opera for moths: artist Redell Olsen's collaboration with scientists and singers on 2020-21 DARE Prize commission

Poet, writer and visual artist Redell Olsen was announced as the winner of the 2020-21 DARE Art Prize in June last year.  Awarded by the University of Leeds and Opera North, in association with the National Science and Media Museum and The Tetley, Leeds, the prize is a £15,000 award for artists and scientists to collaborate on new approaches to the creative process. For the past year Olsen has worked with scientists at the University and singers and music staff at Opera North, producing artworks ranging from collage and poetry to film and music. She has collaborated with scientists from the BioDAR unit at the University of Leeds, and though the pandemic prevented planned fieldwork,  virtual access to objects in the Science Museum Group Collection in Bradford helped broaden the scope of her work.

Now the fruits of this collaboration are available online. Redell Olsen‘s DARE Art Prize commission Weather, Whether Radar: Plume of the Volants, which can now be experienced online at weatherwhetherradar.art. Scientists as the BioDAR unit use discarded data from weather radar to monitor insect biodiversity. The ‘plumes’ of insects that sometimes register on radar were at first dismissed as ‘noise’, being of no meteorological use, but the BioDAR initiative is finding new ways to map and identify insect abundance and diversity as distinct from the weather. Olsen's work revolves around discarded material: knowledge or culture that can be reused in different and unforeseen ways. 

Many of the pieces employ an imaginative interpretation of scientific language, or conversely, a contemporary reclamation of historic texts or cultural artefacts. Her reworking of an aria from Handel's Acis and Galatea proposes an ‘inter-species opera’, the artist reimagines the character of the cyclops Polyphemus as the polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus). Informed by current climate and environmental crises, as well as Virginia Woolf's essay The Death of The Moth, Olsen’s new libretto is performed by the Chorus of Opera North and bass-baritone Matthew Stiff. 

Other works responding to the Science Group Collection available to view online include a poem inspired by a photograph of Hollywood actor and inventor Hedy Lamarr, and a fictional account of an encounter at a museum in which an 18th century wax vanitas is displayed.

Redell Olsen comments, "Throughout this strange year of remote sensing and distanced collaboration I have been attempting to situate my work somewhere between artistic, poetic and scientific research, a context which seems ever more important given the latest indications of planetary climate crisis."

Redell Olsen's DARE Art Prize commission is available at the online studio, she has also produced a limited edition book. Further information from the Opera North website, 

Re-opening with an expanded season and its own entrance: Opera North's Howard Assembly Room

The Howard Assembly Room (Photo Justin Slee)

Opera North's Howard Assembly Room has been doubly closed (if that makes any sense). Not only were the venue's doors shut because of the present restrictions, but Opera North's £18M redevelopment campaign Music Works closed the whole building. But Music Works nears completion and the Howard Assembly Room reopens in October 2021 complete with its own front door!

The opening weekend of the season 9-10 October 2021 has an American feel to complement Opera North and Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Bernstein double bill (Trouble in Tahiti and dances from West Side Story) at the Grand Theatre, so there are Tiger Lilies in their exploration of Cole Porter's songs, Love for Sale, and baritone Quirijn de Lang and mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy (who sing the leading roles in Opera North's production of Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti) will be joined by principal guest conductor Anthony Hermus and members of the Opera North orchestra for songs from The Great American Songbook.

Other highlights include Yorkshire-born composer Gavin Bryars and his Ensemble performing two of his most seminal works, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet and The Sinking of the Titanic, the Brodsky Quartet in Bach, Shostakovich and Schubert's Quintet with cellist Laura van der Heijden, the Tallis Scholars in Christmas mode, Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset performing with Inuit, Sami and Siberian singers, Scandinavian jazz greats… and instruments made from ice, and soprano Gweneth Ann Rand and pianist Simon Lepper in a programme which is a personal reflection of Black voices with music by Debussy, Ravel and spirituals, songs sung by Billie Holliday and Nina Simone, works by Adolphus Hailstork and Errollyn Wallen.

There is also an extensive folk and jazz programme featuring visits from artists such as Courtney Pine.

The auditorium, with its spectacular gilt, barrel-vaulted roof and leaded windows, first opened in 1879 as a respectable alternative to Leeds’ music halls, hosting concerts, conjuring shows, variety performances and public meetings. After spells as a fleapit cinema and a store during the following century, it reopened as the Howard Assembly Room in 2009. Few changes have been made to the space itself since it was shuttered as part of Music Works in 2019, but the redevelopment project has finally given the Assembly Room its own dedicated entrance on New Briggate; an elegant new glazed atrium for refreshments and socialising; improved and fully accessible front-of-house facilities, and a new restaurant in the former shop units beneath it, due to be unveiled just after the venue itself.

Full details from the Howard Assembly Room website.