En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Orchestra of Opera North

As the UK continues to emerge from lockdown, Leeds Playhouse and Opera North stage Sondheim. 

Opera North performed a semi-staged and shortened Fidelio with a committed group of soloists, chorus and orchestra led by Mark Wiggelsworth.  With a pared Orchestra, the opera came across as a hymn of hope.

Brecht and Weill's Seven Deadly Sins, directed and choreographed by Gary Clarke and conducted by James Holmes, is performed by Opera North in a live-streamed performance from Leeds Playhouse.

Opera North's revival of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro directed by Jo Davies and conducted by Antony Hermus at Leeds Grand Theatre is still full of comic exuberance.

Opera North brings Kurt Weill's “Broadway opera” Street Scene to the Leeds Grand Theatre in a thrilling production directed by Matthew Eberhardt and conducted by James Holmes.

Michael Barker-Craven directs and Renato Balsadonna conducts this successful revival of Puccini's La bohème in Opera North's production at Leeds Grand Theatre.

In 1724, Handel's Giulio Cesare was a vehicle for star singers Senesino and Francesca Cuzzoni. Maria Sanner and Lucie Chartin step into their shoes with great success for this Opera North revival. 

At a time when the “relevance” is bandied around all too frequently in relation to opera, Martinů's really does deserve that tag. 

Opera North's Aida, directed by Annabel Arden and conducted by Sir Richard Armstrong in Leeds Town Hall, is a welcome radical interpretation in the spirit of the times. 

A daring double bill from Opera North and Phoenix Dance Theatre pairs Jeanguy Saintus' new choreography for The Rite of Spring with a revival of Christopher Alden's production of Gianni Schicchi. 

Tim Albery's production for Opera North is well sung and superbly acted, involving us deeply in Janáček's tragic family drama.

Sinister aspects are stressed in Mozart's The Magic Flute at Leeds Grand Theatre directed by James Brining and conducted by Robert Howarth.

Opera North's triumphant UK première production of Silent Night by Kevin Puts is directed at Leeds Town Hall by Tim Albery and conducted by Nicholas Kok.

Giles Havergal directs and Martin André conducts an energetic production of Franz Léhar's The Merry Widow at the Grand Theatre, Leeds.

Edward Dick directs a Tosca full of contemporary references with Opera North at Leeds Grand Theatre, Puccini's score conducted by Antony Hermus.

Cole Porter's exuberant wordsmithery and his smash-and-grab appropriation of a dozen musical styles can hardly fail to entertain; Opera North give us four top class leads.

Opera North's Salome, conducted by Sir Richard Armstrong at Leeds Town Hall, caught the seductive frenzy of the opera.

Alessandro Talevi's production of Don Giovanni, conducted by Christoph Altstaedt, receives a welcome revival at the Grand Theatre, Leeds. 

If you had received an invitation to a masked ball at which there turned out to be no masks and no dancing, it's understandable you'd feel disappointed. 

A convincing revival for Opera North's Madama Butterfly at Leeds Grand Theatre directed by Tim Albery and conducted by Martin Pickard.

Two thematically linked, but contrasting short operas are the final component of Opera North's Little Greats season at the Leeds Grand Theatre.

Opera North's Little Greats festival continues with two deeply contrasting short operas - a grimly tragic and austere version of Macagni's Cavalleria rusticana and a frothy and hilarious production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury.

Charles Edwards and Annabel Arden direct Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges in a contrasting pairing of two short operas in Opera North's 'Little Greats' season.

At the opera’s great climaxes Suffolk’s famous wood-and-brick building could barely contain it.

La Cenerentola is the final component of Opera North's fairytale season, with every voice and every character getting a chance to revel in Rossini's intricate ornamentation.

Opera North's Hansel and Gretel at the Grand Theatre Leeds, directed by Edward Dick, is witty and perceptive, with some insights provide by Freudian psychanalysis

Opera North's new production of The Snow Maiden is the first professional staging in the UK for over 60 years, although the magic is intermittent

Crowning this cycle came a truly magnificent performance of Götterdämmerung, centred very much on Richard Farnes and his orchestra.

While the Welsh were merrily slaying Belgians in Euro 2016, one dragon was on the receiving end at the Royal Festival Hall.

In Anna Russell's wittily deadpan analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle, she describes Wotan as “the head god” – pausing for dramatic effect before adding “and he's a crashing bore too.”

Opera North's cycle offers a form of personal Wagner therapy: all four music dramas in concert performances, but with carefully choreographed video and lighting effects. 

Mahler's epic setting of the final scene from Goethe's Faust is so demanding of musical resources that any performance is a special occasion: what better work to conclude the Orchestra Of Opera North's triumphant 2015-2016 season? 

Under the baton of Richard Farnes, the Orchestra of Opera North performed Lutosławski and Mahler in Leeds Town Hall.

Der fliegende Holländer at Leeds Town Hall shows Opera North at its most exciting, in a production conducted by Richard Farnes, with Béla Perencz and Alwyn Mellor.

Kees Bakels and the Orchestra of Opera North perform Gershwin, Shostakovich, Ravel and Stravinsky at Leeds Town Hall.

A fine new edition of Mozart's Requiem recieves its UK première, overshadowed by a trenchant Sibelius Fourth from Opera North under Jac van Steen.

Opera North's La Traviata at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, makes an excellent start to Opera North's new season.

Parisian romance from Opera North for Valentine's Day, from La bohème to Orpheus via café chansons. 

The bicentenary of Richard Wagner’s birth is inescapable, and it comes as no surprise that, however brief their offering, an institution as august as the Huddersfield Choral Society (HCS) could not allow the moment to pass without taking advantage of the opportunity to perform one of Wagner’s most impressive choral outbursts – “Wacht auf! Es nahet gen den Tag” (Awake! the dawn of day draws near) f

This new production of Mozart’s final, and often overlooked, opera from John Fulljames and Opera North is neither a period piece nor a straightforward translation into our own time. Instead, it inhabits it own dark and austere world created by set designer Conor Murphy and Finn Ross, whose stylish abstract projections incorporate elements of government buildings both ancient and modern.

Few operas begin as arrestingly as Verdi’s Otello; no overture here – or, indeed, the first act of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, in a single galvanising orchestral outburst a terrific storm is set in motion, underpinned by the most gratingly dissonant of pedals in the lowest reaches of the organ.

Leeds is so lucky to have virtuoso violinist David Greed still within reach, ready and available to perform as a soloist at concerts like this with the excellent orchestra of which he was the youngest leader in the country when it was formed in 1978. It was really thrilling to experience The Lark Ascending live, and to see him standing there just a few feet in front of the audience.

Opera North’s concert staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle continued last night with Die Walküre, the “first night” proper of the cycle after the “preliminary evening” of Das Rheingold.

Once upon a time it was standard practice that most public concerts in Britain would be preceded by the National Anthem; last night in Huddersfield Town Hall a great many members of the audience were caught off guard when a brass and percussion fanfare struck up into the loudest, most ecstatic rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’ I have ever heard.

New composers usually find it difficult, or rather near-impossible, to have their work performed in professional circumstances in front of a critical audience.

Queen of Spades began life as a sharp little ghost story by Alexander Pushkin, quite different in tone and spirit from the melodramatic adaptation by Modest Tchaikovsky, who wrote the libretto for his composer brother.

Baritone Thomas Hampson recently quipped that he'd try anything other than Gilbert and Sullivan, echoing the sentiments of many opera fans who are inclined to see the operettas penned by the Victorian duo as the preserve of amateur dramatic societies and school drama clubs. With this in mind, it was somewhat surprising to see Opera North create a new production of Ruddigore back in 2010.

When Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in 1904, it was heavily booed. Few who attended that disastrous first performance could have imagined that, more than one hundred years on, it would have evolved into one of the most enduringly popular and widely performed operas in the world.

The concept of freedom is at the heart of Opera North's current production of Fidelio. As soon as you open your programme, you are encouraged by the company's General Director Richard Mantle to consider Beethoven's only opera as having something to say about the struggle for liberty that has been taking place in the Middle East over the past few months.