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| 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.
