Bite-size opera

For the Autumn season Opera North are returning to their hugely successful The Little Greats, six one-act operas offered in new productions and paired in every possible permutation so that you can see just the two you want, or, for half the full ticket price, you can take just the one before or the one after the central interval.

Highly acclaimed director, Annabel Arden who is staging operas by Ravel and Janacek is also co-ordinating the whole of a very complex season for the Leeds company.

Having spent her younger years in the theatre as co-founder of Theatre de Complicite, where she was both actor and producer, Arden’s introduction to directing opera came with Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Opera North in 1994, and since then she has been in high demand with companies around the world.

“I suppose coming from my drama background I wanted to work with a company of singers so that the audience can relate to the cast, just as we used to have in repertory theatre, when you would go to see your favourite actor,” she says. “Here you can see your favourite singers in different roles, as for four months we have created a resident company.”

Updating opera stories is proving to be one of today’s dividing lines between producers, and even more so among audiences, the move to attract younger opera-goers, by introducing trendy presentations, is risking alienating the older and more traditional generation. So where does Arden stand on this thorny subject?

“Period productions have their place as some are reliant on a time in history, just as you will have seen in my Opera North production of Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, where that had to be in Revolutionary France simply to make sense, but in all of the six one-act operas we have the possibility of drawing parallels with life today.”

In addition to those long established operatic twins, Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, the season offers Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges, a story of a naughty child who finds himself punished when objects he has misused come to life. That will make a strong contrast when coupled with Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti which explores a troubled marriage in American suburbia. Also in the

So why not take the Bernstein and Janacek’s rarely staged Osud, a fascinating score that seemed destined for obscurity, so problematic was its staging that all the Czech companies gave it up as impossible, and Janacek never saw it. Also in the season is Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Trial by Jury. “The Little Greats aren’t stuffy or about big sets and costumes, what they are about is telling a story with music,” says Arden. “I hope it does draw in lots of first- timers, there really is so much variety here, with something for everyone, just come and give it a try.” That is being made possible to all opera newcomers who are offered the best available seat at any performance in Opera North’s Autumn Season at the Leeds Grand Theatre for just £10.

The Winter season is a more conventional series of popular operas, opening with a reprise of Tim Albery’s production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, the cast headed by the French soprano, Anne Sophie Duprels, in the role of Cio-Cio San, Peter Savidge as Sharpless, and making his UK debut, Merunas Vitulskis is Pinkerton. A second revival sees the return of Alessandro Talevi’s witty and imaginative staging of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, reuniting William Dazeley as a swaggering Don, Alastair Miles as his faithful Leporello, and Elizabeth Atherton as Donna Elvira. Verdi’s popular Un Ballo in Maschera enters the company’s repertoire for the first time, and it will bring together the director, Tim Albery and conductor Richard Farnes.

A star-studded international cast includes the Mexican tenor, Rafael Rojas as the ill-fated King Gustav of Sweden, the Hungarian soprano, Adrienn Miksch as Amilia and the New Zealand baritone, Phillip Rhodes as the misguided Anckerstroem.

Bringing the opera year to a close, the company continue their highly successful concert stagings with Richard Strauss’s intense and most shocking opera, Salome, based on Oscar Wilde’s play.

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Each of The Little Greats operas lasts around one hour, starting at 7.15pm with the second opera at 9pm.

The full listing of the mix-and-match options on www.operanorthco.uk/littlegreats

The operas go on tour to Hull, Nottingham, Newcastleand Salford from October 26 through November, and are performed in a fixed coupling with tickets only available for the complete evening.

The Autumn Series at the Leeds Grand Theatre runs from September 16-October 21. Tickets (including the £10 offer) from 0844 8482720 or 
www.operanorth.co.uk