STREAMED LIVE FROM LEEDS TOWN HALL

Opera North will launch its innovative Switch ON programme in a special livestreamed concert from Leeds Town Hall at 7pm on Wednesday 30 September, presented by broadcaster, writer and presenter of BBC Radio 3’s In Tune, Suzy Klein.

Switch ON: Live from Leeds will be available to watch live and then on demand, via OperaVision and Opera North’s YouTube channels.

The Leeds-based national opera company has responded to the postponement of its Autumn and Winter mainstage operas with an ambitious new programme of live events and digital projects, embodying its commitment to make music with, and for, audiences in communities across the North of England.

Members of the ensemble and the Music Staff of Opera North will perform the second movement from Dvořák’s String Quintet No. 2, and to accompany the Chorus and soloists including Fflur Wyn, Katie Bird, Tim Nelson, Nicholas Watts, Amy Freston and Elizabeth Llewellyn.

The concert will feature highlights from the current Switch ON programme and exclusive previews of upcoming events, with repertoire ranging from Handel, Beethoven and Puccini to excerpts from recent Opera North commissions by Jasdeep Singh Degun and Will Todd.

Katie Bird and Tim Nelson will perform Mimi and Marcello’s heartrending Act III duet from La bohème, looking forward to artist and filmmaker Matthew Robins’ animated paper-cut re-imagining of Act III of Puccini’s opera, which will be projected onto walls in towns and cities across the North of England in the run-up to Christmas in a new Opera North commission.

Tenor and former Opera North Chorister Nicholas Watts  will join Head of Music David Cowan at the piano for a song from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin.

Elizabeth Llewellyn  returns, direct from the role of Mimì in Scottish Opera’s socially distant La bohème, to lead the Chorus of Opera North in the Easter Hymn from Cavalleria Rusticana to close the evening.

Opera North’s Switch ON: Live from Leeds can be streamed live via OperaVision and the Company’s YouTube channel at 7pm on Wednesday 30 September.

Main image of Leeds Town Hall by Robert Workman