From a day at the beach to a night at the opera, community finds new voice

Can opera change a town?

Opera North thinks so.

Two years ago the Leeds-based company, the largest outside London, travelled to the seaside town of Bridlington on a bold mission.

Its aim was to take the art form to a place where opera audiences are thin on the ground and in the process show that the music and performance could be beneficial to the resort.

The children at Bridlington’s Bay Primary aren’t concerned by mission statements. Neither are the opera aficionados who have been teaching them about singing. They just believe – really believe – that they can use opera, or “sung stories” to help people and maybe even change a place for the better.

“You can’t just go in and say, ‘Right, let’s do a workshop’, and expect the people in the town to be involved and engaged. When I arrived two years ago, most of the town had never heard of Opera North,” says Karen Gillingham.

“You think opera isn’t perhaps the easiest thing to go into a community with, but one of the first barriers we dealt with when we arrived was to get people involved and say that they didn’t need to worry if they didn’t know anything about opera because all it is, is a sung story – and who doesn’t love stories?”

Gillingham is the community director of Beached, a brand new opera which will have its premiere on July 15 at The Spa in Bridlington. It has been written by Lee Hall, the man who penned Billy Elliot, with the help of people in the town. Hall has regularly spoken to the workshops organised by Opera North to glean material for the script. Beached, based, appropriately, on the story of a day at the beach, is the result.

When it goes on stage it will also feature a 400-strong community cast, all from Bridlington, with an age range of one-year-old to 82.

It makes today, a rehearsal at Bay Primary School to which the Yorkshire Post is invited, a confusing prospect. Opera North is a name synonymous with classy and impressive productions. From the company’s base in Leeds, where a few years ago it received several millions of pounds of Arts Council money to build a new home, its shows open at the appropriately-named Grand Theatre in Leeds before touring the world.

Community shows are the diametric opposite of this. While undoubtedly made with love, care and attention, they often lack the professional quality that lies at the heart of Opera North. How do these two sit side by side? Easily, if the day at Bay Primary is any kind of indication.

Gillingham is joined at the school rehearsal by Lea Cornthwaite, who is assistant director of the production. The children in the room are Year Five pupils, which means they are nine and ten years old. Despite their youth, Cornthwaite and Gillingham are drilling the school kids with a surprising tenacity.

And yet, the kids seem to get it. Singing in front of your peers can be terrifying, but these children are giving it a go. If they get it wrong, Gillingham and Cornthwaite stop them and make them do it all again. The children seem to lap it up. Maybe opera really can affect a change in people.

The Beached project began three years ago when Opera North received funding from Sing Up! – the Music Manifesto’s National Singing Programme, East Riding of Yorkshire Council and Yorkshire Forward to create a programme involving 3,000 local people.

With the help of the Bridlington Renaissance Partnership, the company was introduced to various community groups and individuals who would help get Beached off the ground.

When Opera North first went into the town Andrew Hewitt was a co-ordinator for the partnership, a group of local stakeholders from the public, private and community sector who work together to regenerate the town. Like many seaside towns, Hewitt says, Bridlington has suffered as the glorious heydays of the British seaside holiday went the way of the dodo, leaving behind areas where the main source of industry and income had disappeared.

He says: “In Bridlington there are pockets of deep deprivation. Particularly around the town centre, where the jobs were always seasonal and no longer exist.

“When Opera North said they wanted to come to the town with this project, it dovetailed perfectly with what we were trying to do with the Bridlington Renaissance Partnership. One important aspect of what we are trying to achieve is the raising of expectations. With a large opera company coming from a big city, it brings with it the possibility of raising aspirations for young people in the town. It can give them a sense that they can aspire to success.”

Mr Hewitt also says that by simply being a part of community projects which involve singing and performing in this way, young people in Bridlington have also been given the chance to learn skills that will help them in the future.

“It is a town without much cultural provision,” says Mr Hewitt. “So to bring something like this has enormous benefits. People learn confidence, team work, all those things that will help in their future.”

At Bay Primary, thoughts and hopes for a bright future are at the forefront of the project. For these youngsters, their first experience of opera has come from working with professionals at the top of their game and in a few weeks they will go on to sing in an opera, on a stage, in front of the whole town. It’s not a bad introduction to an art from that is so often thought of as elitist.

Opera North coming to town isn’t just about those youngsters who will be the future of Bridlington though. The youngsters who make up the 400 strong community chorus are only a part of a much larger whole. Lee Cornthwaite has found himself working with mother and toddler groups, older people, day centres and his enthusiasm for the project is utterly infectious.

He says: “There really is no need to make the argument. Mentally, physically, emotionally, in every way imaginable, singing is beneficial and people in Bridlington have really embraced that.”

Helen Mahoney, education officer at Opera North, has run the project for the Leeds company.

She says: “There is not very much culturally happening in the town, it is a long way from any other major cities where people might be able to experience cultural activities. If you don’t ever see a piece of opera, how do you know if it’s for you or not?”

By bringing opera to Bridlington, says everyone involved, the company is not simply “bringing the art form to the masses”. It appears to be doing something more important with a wider and lasting impact in this weather- beaten seaside town.

It is bringing the community together and giving the people of Bridlington something they can be proud of and possibly, for many of the young people involved, showing them something culturally they never knew existed.

Who knows if those children singing about a day at the beach will become opera buffs or even performers, but by taking the company to Yorkshire’s East coast, Opera North has turned that into a possibility where it didn’t previously exist.

Maybe in July we’ll see opera has actually managed to change a town.

* Beached, The Spa, Bridlington, July 15, 16, 17. Tickets 01262 678258 .