Young opera stars show the professionals how to survive

As theatres struggle with ever decreasing budgets, they could well learn a lesson in financial creativity from Leeds Youth Opera. Carmel Harrison reports.

While arts organisations across the country are braced for the cuts to bite, Leeds Youth Opera stands as a model of just what can be achieved with a little creativity and a lot of hard work.

When the curtain went up this week on La Traviata the backstage team read as much of a Who’s Who of theatrical achievement as any professional programme.

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If the backroom team wasn’t enough to impress, the female lead of Violetta is being shared between a semi-professional whose most recent stage performance was leading the Geordie Proms in Newcastle, and an aspiring opera singer studying for a Masters at Huddersfield University.

The company has always had to be creative, be it trying to raise the cash for copyright operas or enough money for costumes. La Traviata is no exception. Against all the odds it has managed to assemble an envy-making production team and it is this refusal to compromise which has won LYO a loyal following and the support of some influential movers and shakers from the world of opera.

“We have a tradition of putting on productions such as La Traviata and we don’t compromise because some of the cast are very young,” explains Mike Williamson, LYO’s musical director. “Similarly we don’t stage a production they can’t tackle. There is a lot of debate before we decide what to do, which explains why our repertoire has been so diverse.

“We might do an opera twice but never three times. We want to keep it fresh because while we have a turnover of singers we have a loyal following.

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“It could be one of the reasons we get good young singers referred to us from across the north of England by well respected singing teachers.”

LYO’s commitment to high standards is laudable, but it can be a tough call when each production can cost in excess of £13,000 to stage. All of the money is raised by the company and when one opera finishes the fund raising starts for the next.

The team is led by London-based Sam Brown, a former staff director at Opera North. He jumped at the opportunity to work on a chorus opera with a cast powered by drive and ambition. He describes it as a labour of love, demanding as it did that he travelled from his London home each weekend for Saturday rehearsals and he was determined to apply the same standards to his work with LYO as he does to any other company.

While Sam was travelling north each weekend, alternate Saturdays, Rachel Dyson, who juggles her work at the Sage in Gateshead with a burgeoning opera career was travelling south to rehearse the shared female lead of Violetta. She first met Sam while working with the Hermitage Opera company and he also managed to persuade past and present colleagues from the Yorkshire theatrical world to work alongside him voluntarily, from set designers to movement coaches.

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“It is always a struggle to persuade professionals to work for nothing, but once you explain the calibre of the cast they are more than happy to provide input,” he says, the exhaustion from battling snow storms to travel north in December still fresh in his mind.

The term “youth” is applied in its broadest form with the boundaries of an upper age limit stretched to allow for more mature sopranos and tenors. Dyson, 29, shares the role of Violetta with 22-year-old Emma Walton, who is studying for a Masters degree in Opera Performance at the University of Huddersfield, while Alfredo is played by 24-year-old Will Lindsay a pupil in Chambers in Leeds. But even having secured a first-class cast, challenges remained.

“One of the biggest constraints facing us, like everyone else at the moment, is financial,” he explained. “Operas can be fiendishly expensive to stage because they are historically set and that means big frocks using lots of fabric. I love theatricality, but that just wasn’t viable.

“To get over this we relocated La Traviata to the 1920s. It helped save a lot of money because it made the costumes easier to source and they also work better for young people than having these huge dresses. We’ve been creative with make up too with pierrot faces which allow us to depict Violetta becoming paler and paler as the opera progresses.”

When the curtain goes down this is one production that will guarantee the colour never fades on LYO.

La Traviata is being staged at The Carriageworks theatre in Leeds to February 19.