New season at Opera North

A revival of David McVicar’s recent production of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, opens Opera North’s new season and introduces the company’s new music director, Aleksandar Markovic.

“It will be my very first Rosenkavalier, though I have long known and loved the opera, and I was delighted to be asked to conduct the work,” he says during a break in rehearsals. “I already know that it is in a very beautiful period staging which makes good sense of a story set in 18th century Vienna. I will also be conducting Puccini’s Turandot at the other end of the season.

“I have in mind conducting two or three operas each season, and one of my first aims is looking to find ways to develop a young audience. I want to make sure we get the message out that opera does not live in the past, but is relevant to present day life with humour, passion, violence and conflict that is far more real, and with powerful music can go far beyond anything they see in television or in films.”

Markovic began his hugely successful career in the theatre as chief conductor of the Tyrolean Opera House in Innsbruck where he enjoyed a busy schedule of popular repertoire productions, before moving into the concert hall to take charge of the famous Brno Philharmonic Orchestra.

If the Rosenkavalier story of the Field Marshall’s wife having taken the teenage Count Octavian as a lover to fully satisfy her sensual needs had greatly offended the Austrian aristocracy, the opera, resplendent with Strauss’s gorgeous waltz melodies, was a huge success.

Markovic has chosen for the leading role the Swedish soprano, Ylva Kihlberg, who last year sang the name part in Janacek’s opera, Janufa, when the young Serbian-born conductor was first introduced to Opera North audiences. Helen Sherman – who played Dorabella in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte earlier this year – is Octavian, with Fflur Wyn, as Sophie, and Henry Waddington as the grumpy Baron Ochs.

Taking up Markovic’s theme on the reality of opera, a new production of Benjamin Britten’s highly disturbing Billy Budd, is based on real-life events aboard an American ship when innocence is corrupted and good is destroyed by evil. Some of today’s outstanding Britten interpreters are included in an exceptionally fine cast – Alan Oke takes the role of ineffectual Captain Vere, Roderick William is young sailor Budd and Alastair Miles is in the role of the evil John Claggart.

A taste of life on the River Seine is pictured in Puccini’s Il tabarro, a one act opera where a hard-working barge owner finds his young wife cheating on him with one of his workmen. It is paired with Suor Angelica, the composer’s picture of an Italian convent where Angelica is sent by her wealthy family as punishment for having an illegitimate child. Anne-Sophie Duprels sings the unfortunate young woman.

In a complete contrast, the winter season brings three fairy-tale stories with Christmas connections, headed by the company’s first presentation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, an opera that retains its popularity in Russia, but is seldom seen here. The production promises to make full use of video imagery to blend and contrast the world of fantasy and reality.

Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel is presented in a new staging by famous Shakespearian producer, Edward Dick. The performers will feature the great Wagnerian soprano, Susan Bullock, with Fflur Wyn and Katie Bray as the two children.

The trio of fairy-tales is completed by Rossini’s Cinderella, though his version reshapes it into a gentle romantic comedy, the arias come straight from his serious operas. Cinderella becomes a showcase for virtuoso coloratura mezzo sopranos and Opera North have chosen the Canadian, Wallis Giunta for the lead role.

Following the company’s hugely successful concert staging of The Ring, in April Puccini’s Turandot is given the same treatment with its use of large chorus and orchestra. The Irish soprano Orla Boylan sings the ice-cold Princess, with the popular Mexican-born tenor Rafael Rojas as the Calef who gets to sing the world’s most popular tenor aria, Nessun dorma.

The new season opens at Leeds Grand Theatre on September 17 with Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.

The season, through to next April, contains five main stage new productions of operas by Puccini, Britten, Humperdinck, Rossini, and the first Leeds performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s seldom performed fairy-tale, The Snow Maiden. Special prices for the under 30’s.

Opera North also tours to Newcastle, Salford, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Gateshead and Belfast.

Leeds Grand Theatre box office 0844 8482700. www.operanorth.co.uk.