Highlights of Opera North's new Green Season

I found myself at just such a performance at the weekend, at Opera North’s Little Listeners, where the event was literally miraculous. There is no other word for the fact that over one hundred children aged between babes in arms and highly opinionated sat on said mats and cushions, absolutely rapt for around forty minutes and actually listened to two beautifully told stories with live music from the orchestra of Opera North.

The icing on this particularly delicious cake to tired parents, was that the musicians and performers hung around for at least another half an hour to talk to the children, show them how their instruments worked and sounded and it was in that half hour that it was clear to see why Opera North’s Green Season is more than just marketing. The organisation genuinely cares about the future if the care and attention it lavished on the young audience on Saturday was any indication.

The Green Season involves the company’s three newest productions, Verdi’s Falstaff, Puccini’s La Rondine and a revolutionary piece of work called The Masque of Might, made from ‘recycled’ pieces of music by Henry Purcell.

The creation of the season is being guided by the Theatre Green Book, an industry standard brought together during lockdown by theatre makers and sustainability experts. The co-founder of Sustainable Arts in Leeds, Jamie Saye, is Opera North’s sustainability champion of the season.

He says: “The Theatre Green Book pulls together existing guidance and creates a shared standard for environmentally responsible theatre. It helps us to look at every aspect of our productions, buildings and operations – and even the ways in which our audiences get to and from our performances.

“Sustainability begins at the outset, with the concept and vision, and it’s critical that the whole company works together on achieving it. It’s literally built into the fabric of these productions: one of our first tasks was to put together a materials inventory that lists the sources of everything used in sets, props and costumes, and planned disposal routes after the show”.

It’s a large, impressive, and given the heatwave we’ve been experiencing at this start of September, clearly necessary effort. The production office co-ordinator Laura Hart has spent months gathering props and materials from the company’s base.

“Sustainability isn’t something new for us, nothing ever goes in the bin,” she says. “We reuse almost everything as a matter of course, from the truck bases that move scenic elements around the stage, to steel tubing, to costumes and props”.

Yet, she says, the Green Season has driven some fundamental changes in the way the team works. Plundering the miles of shelves and boxed-up sets at the stores has brought back memories for designer Leslie Travers, who has conjured the settings of some of the company’s most celebrated productions: “I love this history of the shows we’ve done together, and I’ve loved giving them another life for the Green Season”.

“Falstaff, for example, features windows from Figaro which we’ve resized and adapted, the sky from Orpheus at the back, and there are shelves full of objects that frame and comment on the action, and reappear as elements in the sets of the other two operas. The object that I really love is our magnificent 1970s caravan, Falstaff’s home, which is then transformed into a theatre in The Masque of Night”.

Of course, with all this going on, it might be possible to forget about the shows - or perhaps not, given that the most remarkable is going to be itself recycled. Billed as ‘an eco-entertainment’, the new piece has been assembled and adapted by Sir David Poutney from the existing music of Henry Purcell and addresses themes such as the abuses of a powerful political leader and the gathering climate crisis. Combine all this with work like the Little Listeners and Opera North is really demonstrating an impressive commitment to the future.

Details operanorth.co.uk