The seductive style of Mad Men meets the powerful emotion of opera this Autumn, as Opera North brings 1950s glamour to theatres across the North of England with its first ever staging of Trouble in Tahiti, Leonard Bernstein’s sparkling satire on the American Dream. What’s more, with opera novices able to get tickets for £10 […]
When its all over and the new year winter blues set in what better way than to recreate the magic that has just gone with a visit to Opera North and their special fairy tale programme. Opera North’s Winter Season enjoys a magical start this January as the Company brings a contemporary twist on three […]
Even some of the most avid opera lovers are not lovers of the works of Benjamin Britten. I am afraid I share this view too. I find his music rather overpowering and his subjects always laced with a morbid tragic theme. Some of his works are taken from those awful stories we had to read, […]
The prospect of spending an evening watching two rather depressing operas, with predictable plots, hung heavily over my head. For Il tabarro and Suour Angelica are two of the three totally contrasting one act operas that form part of Puccini’s Il trittico. In choosing to pair together these two works in one performance Opera North […]
Opera North’s exciting new season starts this week with the Company’s new Music Director, Aleksandar Markovic, conducting David McVicar’s sumptuous production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. A comic exploration of the vagaries of romantic love and advancing age, this is an opera which delights in the beauty of the soprano voice. Ylva Kihlberg sings the bittersweet […]
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better – it does. For with their production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’ amore or The Elixir of Love, Opera North have gone for gold – and achieved it. Taking an opera out of its original era can often have a negative or detrimental effect on the production […]
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING Liz Coggins is swept away by Opera North’s latest production I was fortunate to see the first performance in 1982 of Cosi Fan Tutte. Not as a critic I hasten to add, but as part of my induction into the world of classical opera by my ex-opera singing mother. “Always be careful when […]
It was in 1981 that I first saw Opera North’s production of The Bartered Bride. It was part of my mother’s inauguration programme for me to learn to appreciate the delights of opera. Choosing the right operas for people who are just starting out as opera goers is so important she used to declare. And […]
I am a purist when it comes to opera, and I thought nothing could change my mind, but Opera North’s production of La Boheme could have changed it. I first saw the company perform this work back in the late 70’s as a very very young opera goer. To be honest I never really warmed […]
I can honestly say that I have never been enamoured by any production of Macbeth or indeed any of Shakespeare’s work whatever its genre. It comes from being force-fed at an early age a diet of the bard’s work delivered in the most boring by an even more boring form mistress. So to find myself […]