2012 – 2013 Don Giovanni Mozart Faust Gounod The Makropulos Case Janáček
Otello Verdi La clemenza di Tito Mozart La voix humaine Poulenc Dido and Aeneas Purcell
Celebrating opera Richard Mantle General Director
Richard Farnes Music Director
A spirit of optimism infuses Opera North’s 2012/13 season, as we celebrate opera in all its extraordinary richness and diversity. 2013 is the year of three enormously significant operatic anniversaries: it will be 200 years since the birth of both Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, and 100 years since the birth of Benjamin Britten. All three composers will feature in our repertoire in 2013. We also celebrate the conclusion of two ongoing cycles of work that have occupied Opera North for several years. In late summer we complete the set of the mature Janáček operas with a new production of The Makropulos Case, which opens at this year’s Edinburgh Festival in August before joining the repertoire of our autumn season tour. Then in January we open a new production of the only mature Mozart opera that we have yet to perform, La clemenza di Tito. The 2012/13 season announced here is slightly shorter than those of previous years. This is because it marks the transition to a new pattern in which our performing year will, commencing with the 2013/14 season, coincide with the financial year. This will help us plan more securely in what is, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future, a challenging financial environment. Nevertheless, this brochure includes seven operas presented in no fewer than six new productions. In the autumn, The Makropulos Case is joined by Mozart’s darkly comic ‘dramma giocoso’ Don Giovanni and by our first production of Gounod’s Faust in more than 20 years, a work that has been among the most frequently requested by Opera North audiences over the years.
After Christmas, we pair two operas, that, although they were written almost 300 hundred years apart, seem made for each other. Both Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Poulenc’s La voix humaine offer equally heart-rending takes on the theme of a woman abandoned by her lover. And so to those anniversaries. Verdi is of course a mainstay of any major opera company, and Opera North has performed eleven of his works over the years. It may therefore come as something of a surprise to realise that his late tragic masterpiece Otello is not among them. We have chosen our moment carefully: there seemed to be no better time to present our first production of what many consider to be Verdi’s supreme operatic achievement than in 2013. Both our other anniversary composers figure strongly later in the year. Wagner takes his place in our programme with Siegfried, the third opera in our ongoing Ring cycle, and our celebration of Benjamin Britten – the greatest English opera composer since Purcell – culminates in a season long ‘Festival of Britten’ in the autumn of 2013 – more about that elsewhere in this brochure. Looking further ahead, we are already planning new productions of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro for 2014. Bringing all these wonderful operas to the stage are many of today’s leading operatic artists, some familiar and well-established, others new and exciting additions to the Opera North family. We hope that you will join us often in the months ahead to celebrate opera.
Wolfgang Amadeus New production Mozart 1787
Don Giovanni
Cast includes: Don Giovanni William Dazeley Leporello Alastair Miles /
Matthew Hargreaves (14, 17, 21, 24 November) Donna Anna Meeta Raval Donna Elvira Elizabeth Atherton / Maribeth Diggle (1 November) Don Ottavio Christopher Turner Zerlina Claire Wild Masetto Oliver Dunn Il Commendatore Michael Druiett Conductor Tobias Ringborg /
Anthony Kraus (1, 7, 17 November) Director Alessandro Talevi Set and Costume Designer
Madeleine Boyd Lighting Designer Matthew Haskins Choreographer Victoria Newlyn
Lasts approximately 3 hours Sung in Italian with English titles
As he seduces his way across Europe, bedding 1003 women in Spain alone, Don Giovanni’s libertinism is a challenge not only to human morality, but also to God. From an old Spanish potboiler Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte forged a dramma giocoso without parallel. Dark comedy vies with tense drama, and the beauty and terror of the score are evidence of a supreme musical dramatist at the height of his powers, divinely (and perhaps diabolically) inspired. Opera North’s first Don Giovanni for seven years is directed by Alessandro Talevi, whose insightful production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw was one of the highlights of the 2009/10 season.
Charles Gounod 1859 New production
Faust
Cast includes: Faust Peter Auty Méphistophélès James Creswell Marguerite Juanita Lascarro Valentin Marcin Bronikowski Wagner Paul Gibson Siébel Robert Anthony Gardiner Marthe Sarah Pring
Faust is a man of middle age who has grown tired of life and yearns only for sensual pleasure and for his lost youth. He summons up Méphistophélès, who agrees to grant his desires – but at the price of his eternal soul. An innocent woman, Marguerite, falls victim to this diabolical pact when she is seduced by Faust: the result is her destruction. But whilst for Marguerite there is hope of redemption, for Faust there is none.
Conductor Stuart Stratford Directors Ran Arthur Braun
& Rob Kearley Set and Visual Designer
Ran Arthur Braun Costume Designer
Sue Willmington Lighting Designer
David Cunningham Lasts approximately 3 hours Sung in French with English titles
Leoš Janáček 1926
Cast includes: Emilia Marty Ylva Kihlberg Albert Gregor Paul Nilon Vítek Mark Le Brocq Kristina Stephanie Corley
The Makropulos Case ‘A 300-year-old beauty – and eternally young – but only burnt-out feeling. Cold as ice. About such a woman I shall write an opera.’ Leoš Janáček
Jaroslav Prus Robert Hayward Janek Adrian Dwyer Dr Kolenatý James Creswell Technician Matthew Hargreaves Cleaning Woman Sarah Pring
Like many artists in 19th-century Europe – among them his countryman Berlioz – Gounod was fascinated with Goethe’s great Faust drama; from it, he fashioned an opera distinctively French, overflowing with memorable melodies. It was an instant hit with audiences throughout the continent, and remains, alongside Carmen, one of the most popular of French operas. Ran Braun and Rob Kearley’s new production stresses the timeless resonance of one of the great legends of western culture.
New production
Hauk-Šendorf Nigel Robson Chambermaid
Rebecca Afonwy-Jones Conductor Richard Farnes Director Tom Cairns
One hundred years after the death of Baron Prus, a battle rages over his inheritance. The true heir to the fortune remains a mystery, until the famous opera singer Emilia Marty reveals the whereabouts of a lost will. The fascinating ‘EM’ has a secret of her own: when a child, she was given a potion granting her 300 years of life. Now, it’s wearing off. Confronted with her own mortality at last, she starts to question the value of everlasting life.
Set and Costume Designer
Hildegard Bechtler Lighting Designer Bruno Poet
Lasts approximately 2 hours Sung in English with English titles
Janáček’s opera is both a mystery thriller and a meditation on immortality and desire. The beguiling, powerfully original score mixes terse drama with glowing lyricism, the everyday with the unearthly. With a top-flight international cast and creative team, this production is the culmination of Opera North’s cycle of Janáček’s major operas.
Giuseppe Verdi 1887 New production
Otello
Cast includes: Otello Ronald Samm Desdemona Elena Kelessidi Iago David Kempster Cassio Michael Wade Lee Emilia Ann Taylor Roderigo Christopher Turner Lodovico Henry Waddington Conductor Richard Farnes
Iago, an ensign in the Venetian army, is a man who bears a grudge. When his general, Otello, passes him over for promotion in favour of Cassio, Iago’s festering resentment quickly turns to downright malice. He poisons Otello’s mind with suspicion, and step by step, leads Otello to believe that his young wife Desdemona is in love with the young and handsome Cassio. And so Iago, a man consumed by envy, makes of Otello a monster of murderous jealousy.
Director Tim Albery Set and Costume Designer
Leslie Travers Lighting Designer Thomas C Hase
Lasts approximately 2 hours 45 mins Sung in Italian with English titles A co-production with Scottish Opera Supported by the
Supported by the
Opera North Future Fund
Wolfgang Amadeus New production Mozart 1791
La clemenza di Tito
Cast includes: Tito Paul Nilon Vitellia Annemarie Kremer Servilia Fflur Wyn Sesto Helen Lepalaan Annio Kathryn Rudge Publio Henry Waddington Conductor Douglas Boyd Director John Fulljames Set and Costume Designer
Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito transmute Shakespeare’s great tragedy of a man who loved not wisely but too well into one of the crowning glories of Italian opera. The intense passions unleashed in the play are only enhanced by the concentrated power of Verdi’s music. This new production reunites the production team of director Tim Albery and designer Leslie Travers who created Opera North’s recent, widely acclaimed Giulio Cesare; Music Director Richard Farnes conducts.
La clemenza di Tito is a tale of erotic obsession and divided loyalties, set in Ancient Rome. The powerful, alluring Vitellia has designs on the Emperor Tito, and is provoked to fury when he opts to marry someone else. She fans the flames of rebellion, and demands his assassination at the hands of her doting lover Sesto, Tito’s trusted confidant. Torn between loyalty to his friend and emperor and his fascination with the hypnotic Vitellia, Sesto makes a choice that tests Tito’s forgiving nature to breaking point.
Conor Murphy Lighting Designer Bruno Poet Projection Designer Finn Ross
Lasts approximately 2 hours 45 mins Sung in Italian with English titles A co-production with Opéra national de Lorraine, Nancy Supported by the
Friends of Opera North
Mozart received the commission for Tito when he was already underway with The Magic Flute, and this opera, composed for the coronation celebrations of the new Emperor of Bohemia, shares with that work the directness and simplicity typical of his late style. John Fulljames, Associate Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House, directs Opera North’s first production of Mozart’s sublime opera seria.
Francis Poulenc 1959 New production
La voix humaine
Cast: Elle Lesley Garrett Conductor Wyn Davies Director Aletta Collins
Lasts approximately 40 minutes Sung in English La voix humaine is presented in a double bill with Dido and Aeneas
A woman is sprawled alone on her bed. ‘It looks like the scene of a murder’ said Jean Cocteau, who wrote the play on which Francis Poulenc’s opera is based. But the woman isn’t dead. She gets up and makes to leave, when the phone rings. It is her ex-lover. During the next 40 minutes we hear one side of an increasingly desperate conversation in which the woman tries anything to win him back. But it’s no use – she can’t get through to him. He hangs up, and she’s left whispering ‘Je t’aime’ to nobody.
Henry Purcell 1689
Cast includes: Dido Pamela Helen Stephen Belinda Amy Freston Sorceress Heather Shipp Spirit Jake Arditti Conductor Wyn Davies
Aeneas, a Trojan prince who has escaped the devastation of his city at the hands of the Greeks, lands in Carthage where Dido is queen. She falls deeply in love with him, but evil forces are at work, bent on her destruction. Aeneas is tricked into abandoning her, and overwhelmed with grief, she dies.
Director/ Choreographer
Aletta Collins Set Designer Giles Cadle Costume Designer Gabrielle Dalton Lighting Designer Bruno Poet
La voix humaine is short in length and high on emotional impact. Through the lone voice of the woman, Poulenc expresses all the pain and fear of rejection in the rawest fashion, whilst enveloping her voice in music of caressing warmth and sensuality. Lesley Garrett makes her return to the operatic stage in a work of rare originality and stark emotional honesty.
Dido and Aeneas
Lasts approximately 1 hour Sung in English Dido and Aeneas is presented in a double bill with La voix humaine
Purcell takes a universal epic and makes of it an intimate human drama, packing a magnificently rich variety of music into the work’s hour-long duration, much of it composed expressly to be danced. This concise masterpiece stood unchallenged as the finest English opera for more than three centuries and there is still no more powerfully moving expression of noble resignation in the face of death than Dido’s great lament ‘When I am laid in earth’. Pamela Helen Stephen, who sang the title role in Opera North’s recent production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, heads the cast in Aletta Collins’ deeply moving production.
Performance Diary August – November 2012
January – March 2013
All performances start at 7.30pm unless otherwise stated.
All performances start at 7.30pm unless otherwise stated.
Edinburgh Festival Theatre Sat 11 Aug The Makropulos Case Mon 13 Aug The Makropulos Case
The Lowry, Salford Quays 7.15pm 7.15pm
Leeds Grand Theatre Fri 28 Sep Fri 5 Oct Fri 12 Oct Sat 13 Oct Wed 17 Oct Thu 18 Oct Fri 19 Oct Sat 20 Oct Tue 23 Oct Wed 24 Oct Thu 25 Oct Fri 26 Oct Sat 27 Oct Wed 31 Oct Thu 1 Nov Fri 2 Nov Sat 3 Nov
Don Giovanni Don Giovanni Don Giovanni Faust Don Giovanni The Makropulos Case Faust Don Giovanni Faust The Makropulos Case Faust Don Giovanni The Makropulos Case Faust Don Giovanni The Makropulos Case Faust
7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm
Tue 6 Nov Wed 7 Nov Thu 8 Nov Fri 9 Nov Sat 10 Nov
Faust Don Giovanni The Makropulos Case Faust Don Giovanni
7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm
Theatre Royal Newcastle Tue 13 Nov Wed 14 Nov Thu 15 Nov Fri 16 Nov Sat 17 Nov
Faust Don Giovanni The Makropulos Case Faust Don Giovanni
7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm
Theatre Royal Nottingham 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm
Tue 20 Nov Wed 21 Nov Thu 22 Nov Fri 23 Nov Sat 24 Nov
Faust Don Giovanni The Makropulos Case Faust Don Giovanni
7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm 7.00pm
Leeds Grand Theatre
Grand Opera House, Belfast
Wed 16 Jan Thu 24 Jan Wed 30 Jan Thu 31 Jan Fri 1 Feb Sat 2 Feb Wed 13 Feb Thu 14 Feb Sat 16 Feb Sun 17 Feb Tue 19 Feb Wed 20 Feb Thu 21 Feb Fri 22 Feb Sat 23 Feb
Tue 5 Mar Wed 6 Mar Thu 7 Mar Fri 8 Mar Sat 9 Mar
Otello Otello Otello La clemenza di Tito Otello La clemenza di Tito Otello La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Otello 2.30pm La voix humaine / 4.00pm Dido and Aeneas La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas La clemenza di Tito La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas La clemenza di Tito La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas
7.00pm
Theatre Royal Newcastle Tue 26 Feb Wed 27 Feb Thu 28 Feb Fri 1 Mar Sat 2 Mar
La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Otello La clemenza di Tito La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Otello
La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Otello La clemenza di Tito La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Otello
The Lowry, Salford Quays Tue 12 Mar Wed 13 Mar Thu 14 Mar Fri 15 Mar Sat 16 Mar
La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Otello La clemenza di Tito La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Otello
Theatre Royal Nottingham Tue 19 Mar La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Wed 20 Mar Otello Thu 21 Mar La clemenza di Tito Fri 22 Mar La voix humaine / Dido and Aeneas Sat 23 Mar Otello
Festival of Britten 2013
Peter Grimes Albert Herring A Midsummer Night’s Dream Death in Venice
In 2013, Opera North launches a major celebration of the achievement of Benjamin Britten, the greatest English opera composer since Henry Purcell. The Company will be mounting productions of four of Britten’s works for the stage, spanning his operatic career from Peter Grimes (1945) to his final opera Death in Venice (1973), and including the comedies Albert Herring (1947) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960). Two of these productions – Albert Herring and Death in Venice – will be new to the Company, whilst Peter Grimes and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are revivals of productions that won widespread acclaim on their first outings. Appearing in the Festival of Britten is a host of distinguished artists, including the singers Dame Josephine Barstow, Giselle Allen, Robert Hayward, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Alan Oke and Peter Savidge; the conductors Richard Farnes and Jac van Steen; and the directors Martin Duncan, Phyllida Lloyd and Yoshi Oida. Full details of Opera North’s Festival of Britten will be announced in November 2012.
The information in this brochure is published in good faith, and is correct at the time of going to print (May 2012), but changes may occasionally be necessary. In the event of unforeseen circumstances, Opera North reserves the right to change casts or performances. Photographs on pages 16 and 17 by Bill Cooper (Peter Grimes) and Tristram Kenton (A Midsummer Night’s Dream).
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