thu 10/07/2025

Opera North

Rusalka, Opera North

A thousand miles away from the Disney version, the transformation scene in Dvořák’s Rusalka is bleak and terrifying. With not a cauldron, bat or cobweb to be seen, the heroine is strapped to an operating table before imbibing the witch’s magic...

Read more...

The Seckerson Tapes: Opera North's Howard Assembly Room

Opera North's Howard Assembly Room (above) is no longer a well-kept secret. Lovingly restored to its former Victorian glory, this one-time annexe to the Grand Theatre, Leeds, has had a chequered history - even briefly servicing the furtive...

Read more...

Ruddigore, Opera North

A magical Ruddigore: Richard Burkhard as Sir Despard Murgatroyd (left) and Grant Doyle as Robin Oakapple

The plot of this rarely performed Gilbert and Sullivan spoof melodrama is gloriously amusing. The male heirs of the Murgatroyd family suffer under a witch’s curse which forces them to commit a crime each day, or suffer an agonising death. Sir...

Read more...

The Seckerson Tapes: Opera North's Ruddigore

Gilbert & Sullivan's audacious parody of Victorian melodrama, Ruddigore, is as spirited a piece of topsy-turvy confection as the celebrated Savoyards ever produced. It arrives at Opera North in a brand-new production directed by Jo Davies and...

Read more...

La Bohème, Opera North

An improbably attractive cast: Bülent Bezdüz as Rodolfo and Anne Sophie Duprels as Mimì

This is a revival of the 1993 production originally directed by Phyllida Lloyd (of Mamma Mia! fame). Directed on this occasion by Peter Relton, it still works brilliantly. Lloyd has updated the setting to 1950s Paris with her young bohemians wearing...

Read more...

Werther, Opera North

Werther is based on the young Goethe’s semi-autobiographical epistolary novel which tells of a young artist’s thwarted love for a simple country girl who is already engaged. First performed in Vienna in 1892, it is audibly a product of that time....

Read more...

Così fan tutte, Grand Theatre, Leeds

The film critic Mark Kermode maintains that if a film is advertised on the side of a bus, it will inevitably be rubbish. Opera North are advertising this revival of Tim Albery’s 2004 Così fan tutte extensively on the sides of buses here in Leeds....

Read more...
Subscribe to Opera North