"As the old Chinese proverb says, the company has certainly been through interesting times," says Richard Mantle. They're about to get a lot more interesting.

Mantle is the general manager of Opera North. This month marks 30 years since the English National Opera decided to venture into the deep, dark north and set up an arm that would serve northerners first class opera.

In those 30 years Opera North has been through good times and bad - and now sits firmly at its place as one of the country's most important cultural companies - and for the region is one of the most culturally significant organisations and contributors.

While other national companies based in the north have not always enjoyed popular and critical acclaim, Opera North has always experienced both, able to pull in the audiences while receiving high critical praise.

As it reaches its 30th year this month, the celebrations from Opera North are strangely muted.

A big deal was made of the company's 21st birthday and the 25th. But this year little has been made of the company making it to three decades of existence.

You get the feeling that Mantle and the company he runs feel a sense of confidence that means neither he nor it need to make a song and dance about making it to 30.

The birthdays celebrated before were those of a company relieved to have made it thus far. Sitting on top of 30 years worth of well received and highly praised productions the company doesn't need to bang its own drum quite so loudly.

There is, however, another reason for keeping the birthday bash low key.

Opera North is about to have a very big celebration.
Ten years in the planning, the final phase of the Transformation project is about to be complete.

Transformation is the name given to the process of £32.5m of investment into the Grand Theatre and Opera House and to Opera North.

Come the new year, the Transformation will be complete.
The final part of the jigsaw is the re-opening of the Assembly Rooms, tucked away in a corner above the Leeds Grand Theatre.

Once a cinema which was damaged by a fire and which has remained closed to the public for over two decades, the newly named Howard Assembly Room has been restored to its original splendour.

"Who would have thought it?," says Mantle, from the new home of Opera North.

"We really had no idea of whether or not the company would be here after 30 years, it really is a remarkable achievement that we have made it this far."

The company was founded in 1978 and its first performance of Saint-Saëns's Samson and Delilah was given on 15 November that year.

While the company performed at the Leeds Grand Theatre and had a home of sorts there, before the Transformation project, its rehearsal rooms were on the outskirts of Leeds at West Park, where the orchestra still rehearses.

The first part of Transformation meant Opera North could buy the building opposite the Grand Theatre and make it a permanent home, complete with two enormous new rehearsal rooms.

The second part of Transformation will also give the company's orchestra a home, in the Grand's Howard Assembly Room.

Mantle says: "When the company was first established, the first thing it did was recruit the orchestra. So to have the orchestra moving down here to join the rest company in the 30th year of the company is something which really does feel very significant."

The new Howard Assembly Room will be much more than a home to the company's orchestra.

It will be a space for provision of an entirely new sort of artistic work for the people of the region.

Mantle says: "The orchestra being here on the same site as the rest of the company is vitally important.

"But the wonderful thing is that we will be able to provide an incredibly diverse programme of work."

Richard Ashton, who will programme the new space, has lined up ten days of consecutive events for the new venue.

Highlights include an evening with Rory Bremner, a performance by pianist Joanna MacGregor, a screening of the Oscar winning animation Peter and the Wolf set to Prokofiev's musical tale and open rehearsals.

The opening event of the Howard Assembly Room's ten day programme provides an ideal link between Opera North's past and its future.

Next year the opening opera of the new season is a new commission by comedy writer, producer and broadcaster Armando Ianucci.

Best known for his work writing Alan Partridge and The Thick of It, Ianucci has written Skin Deep, a satirical opera about cosmetic surgery, which opens at the Grand Theatre on January 16.

He opens the ten day programme of events at the Howard Assembly Room with an in conversation with event.

Mantle says: "Skin Deep is the second new work we have commissioned, following Pinocchio, in ten years.

"New operas are very expensive to produce and that we have someone as skilled and high profile as Armando writing it shows the position the company now holds - which is has earned with 30 years of quality.

"Hosting an event with Armando in the Howard Assembly Room shows perfectly how the company will move forward over the next 30 years."