Leeds Opera Festival brings rare opera productions to venues in and around the city

“The company was formed in 2015 with the joint purpose of performing rare operas and supporting people from the community to enjoy or take part in opera,” says artistic director David Ward. “In 2017 we decided we would like to have an event that would happen every year that people could look forward to so we launched the festival that summer, with performances at Left Bank Leeds.”

The inaugural festival was a relatively small affair, taking place over a couple of days, but it has grown steadily in the intervening years. It moved into the larger venue of Morley Town Hall for a while , the organisers also managed to keep it going through the pandemic with outdoor performances and this year the festival will take place at over 12 venues in and around the city with the main productions being staged at Leeds School of Arts Theatre at Leeds Beckett University.

This summer’s event, featuring local, national and international professional artists, is themed around opera and music from Latin America and the Hispanic world. Highlights include the UK premiere of the Robert Rodrig uez opera Frida telling the life story of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and a new production of Astor Piazzolla’s tango opera Maria de Buenos Aires, collaborating with dancers from Northern School of Contemporary Dance.

“Every festival has a theme and we like to present rarely performed operas,” says Ward. “A lot of them are a bit out of the ordinary that haven’t been staged in the UK before or not performed for some time. Frida is one that I have wanted to do for a number of years. Frida Kahlo’s image is so well known, we are starting to lose sight of who she was, so this is an opportunity to tell her story and highlight what she achieved – she was such an inspiring woman. Frida became the heart of the festival and then we started to look at other events to complement that.”

There is an accompanying programme of talks, workshops and recitals including performances of works by Latin American female composers, a concert from Cuban guitarist Ahmed Dickinson and a rare UK appearance from Spanish pianist Jose Luis Nieto. For younger audiences and families there is a new pop-up opera, Batteries Not Included, created by composer Jose Puello and writer Zodwa Nyoni. “That was developed through workshops we did in three primary schools in Leeds,” says Ward. “We used the pupils’ ideas as the basis for the opera which is about the little lies that parents tell children in order to make their own lives easier. It is a lot of fun.”

In addition to staging high-quality imaginative new productions with renowned professional artists, the Northern Opera Group, which receives funding from Arts Council England, Leeds City Council and others, also present community operas open to participants of all ages and abilities and produce a range of events and resources to encourage engagement with opera including podcasts, exhibitions and documentary films. Recent productions include their 2022 version of Handel’s Silla, which garnered five-star reviews, and Viardot’s Cinderella which won Best Opera in the Classical Music Digital Awards.

With its diverse programme, the festival offers a whole range of exciting performances for opera aficionados and newcomers alike. “We have a core group of people – and not just people based in Leeds – who come to everything because the work we do is so rarely performed,” says Ward. “But we also get a lot of audiences who are coming to opera for the first time, which is great. One of the lovely things about the festival is that it is for the whole of the city. We get out to Seacroft, Farsley, Meanwood and Holbeck – everyone can see something on their doorstep.”

Performances of Frida take place at Leeds School of Arts Theatre, August 29-September 2, Maria de Buenos Aires, August 30, September 1 & 2. Leeds Opera Festival continues until September 10. northernoperagroup.co.uk/2023