'I want to deliver the best possible for the North' - Meet Opera North's new general director Laura Canning

Laura Canning has taken over the reins of Opera North from Sir Richard Mantle, her predecessor, who retired at the end of last year after decades at the helm. Phil Penfold met the new general director.

Looking around her streamlined office, with its side view of The Grand Theatre in the heart of Leeds, one of Laura Canning’s first remarks is something of an understatement.

She says with a smile, and giving a little gesture to the stark and bare walls: “I don’t keep souvenirs. For me, memories are far more important than substance.”

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But Laura – recently appointed as Opera North’s General Director – allows that, in time, there might well be a few of the company’s posters from up-coming productions, and perhaps some photos of key performances.

Laura Canning, Opera North's new general directorLaura Canning, Opera North's new general director
Laura Canning, Opera North's new general director

Anything is possible, and she’s just settling in to being with the company, finding her feet, as any new boss of any major organisation would do.

Then, of course, there’s also the new family home, in Chapel Allerton – she’s married to Michael, who works for Oxford Brookes University, and they have two sons.

William, 21, has just started teaching history in St. Ives in Cambridgeshire and Christopher, 19, who has just started his second year at Cardiff University, where he is reading Philosophy.

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So here she is, the new boss of one of the biggest employers in Yorkshire. Opera North isn’t a few singers on a stage, it’s a full-time orchestra and a sizeable chorus.

Laura Canning, Opera North's new general directorLaura Canning, Opera North's new general director
Laura Canning, Opera North's new general director

There are stagehands, people in administration, all sorts of backstage staff and more besides, who contribute to make it one of the leaders in its field in Europe.

Indeed, where other opera companies have had quite a wobble in recent years, Opera North has remained a flagship operation for the arts in the UK.

Much of that, acknowledges Laura was the result of the careful management of Sir Richard Mantle, her predecessor, who retired at the end of last year, having served for almost three decades.

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You have to offer Laura the old cliched question of “A hard act to follow?”, and she smiles, nods, and adds another word to the phrase to emphasise it. “A very hard act to follow”, she says.

It’s hardly likely that she’ll forget Sir Richard, since he’s frequently in the audience at The Grand, and, to get to her office she has to pass the large rehearsal space, on the same floor, that is named after him.

Laura Canning is one of those people who is instantly likeable. She smiles a lot, loves a joke and a good anecdote, and she is wonderfully empathetic.

When asked to recall her first theatrical experience, she pauses to think and then says: “I think I must have been about four years old and we were in Hong Kong. My father was a Civil Engineer, that’s what took us there.

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"Anyway, my mother decided that it would be fun to see a matinee of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, and off we went to the theatre – in the middle of a typhoon. The weather was so dreadful that I think that the evening performance had to be cancelled.

“When we got there (we had seats in the gallery, and we were the only people up there) I was soaked to the skin, so my very practical mother decided that I was going to hop out of my wet outer clothes, and that she’d hang them over the gallery rail to dry so I saw most of Iolanthe in my underwear.”

In the following years, she realised that the theatre was going to be her world because she loved “the colours the music, the energy that I saw in front of me. I knew that I wanted to be part of all of it.”

And that’s precisely what happened. Her career in the world of opera spans a quarter of a century, and he first major appointment was with Welsh National Opera, where she was Artistic Administrator.

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Then she was tipped off about a position with Houston Grand Opera, and the entire family packed their bags, and went to Texas. There, she was held in high regard for her management skills and where she helped create a Vocal Academy for young singers.

What was it like, over in the US?

“Fascinating,” says Laura, “and also a lot of fun. As well as being an eye-opener, not an experience that I would have missed for the world.

"They have a strong regard for sponsorship in all its many forms – sometimes one of the benefactors would tell us how much they (for example) admired a particular performer, and, if that person suited a production it was always a pleasure to cast them. Benefactor happy, company happy, audience happy.”

Returning to Britain, she was Director of Artistic Administration at the acclaimed Garsington Opera for eight years – and thence, to Leeds.

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She is determined that Opera North continues its much-lauded work in the Yorkshire communities it serves, and she is particularly proud of all its outreach projects – indeed, she gets a little emotional when she’s talking about one day where she visited a dementia and loneliness session, and she saw one of the participants holding hands with a carer, totally lost in the joy of the music.

“I was in floods”, she says quietly, “we must never ever forget the very great power that music has to sway our emotions in all sorts of ways. I am hugely proud of our company when we are involved with things like that.”

She’s equally as proud that Opera North will be a large part of Bradford’s Year of Culture next year – they’ll be opening a brand-new concert-staged production of Verdi’s powerful study of political intrigue, Simon Boccanegra, in the city’s St George’s Hall in the spring, the first time that it has been in the repertoire.

It also travels on to Hull – and to London’s Southbank Centre, as well. Adults under 30, and children, can get tickets for the bargain price of £10, and the lowest adult ticket starts at just £16.

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By coincidence, Boccanegra also happens to be one of her own favourite pieces. “Just listening to those few opening bars alone is absolute perfection, it’s the best, it does something to one’s soul,” she enthuses.

Laura reflects on the eye-watering amounts that some people choose to pay for a touring musical, and points out what value Opera North is. From various sources, ON gets by – with very careful financial management, on £10m a year, and that has to cover absolutely everything it does.

It may sound a lot, but what Opera North also generates is an income around it – if you go to a performance, for example, you are likely to for a meal or a drink beforehand, and that helps pubs and restaurants. The local economy is much enhanced.

Opera North is justifiably praised for the versatility of its programming – it isn’t just opera and concerts, and in the past few months alone they had a much-praised collaboration with Leeds Playhouse, with an effervescent revival of My Fair Lady.

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“We love to offer variety – to reach out to new audiences,” says Laura. “Much as I’d love it, we can’t programme just for me. We must fit into the fabric of Leeds, and indeed, to everywhere where we tour.

" What is our main objective? Easy one – to deliver the best possible for the people of the North. I don’t think that the arts were thought important under the last government. But now, well, we shall see…..”

Laura Canning, you feel, will be a force that leads from the front.

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