Manchester Evening News article 26 August 2016

THIS week I’m taking a look at opera highlights of the coming season in Manchester. We get our opera in concentrated bursts here, as Opera North come over from Leeds usually for one week at a time, but present three different shows within it.

This autumn all eyes will be on the company’s new music director, Aleksandar Markovic, who will appear at The Lowry in November conducting one of its great past productions – Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Heading the starry cast are Ylva Kihlberg as the Marshallin and Helen Sherman as Octavian, with Henry Waddington, Fflur Wyn and William Dazeley.

Alongside comes a double bill of Puccini: two of his Il Trittico one-acters. Il Tabarro is a revival of the David Pountney production seen in the ‘Eight Little Greats’ series in 2004, and Suor Angelica is a new production. Favourite soprano Anne Sophie Duprels stars in the latter (with Patricia Bardon), and Giselle Allen, David Butt Philip and Ivan Iverardi head the cast of Il Tabarro.

On top of that, there’s Billy Budd, by Benjamin Britten, a classic tale of seafaring drama, in a new production by Orpha Phelan. Singers include Alan Oke and Roderick Williams, and Garry Walker conducts. If this reaches even a fraction of the heights of the company’s Peter Grimes a few years ago, it will be magnificent.

In case Wagner fans had not had their fill with Opera North’s complete Ring Cycle earlier this year, the Hallé have a concert performance of Das Rheingold on November 27, conducted by Sir Mark Elder. The singers include Sarah Tynan, Jennifer Johnston, Leah-Marian Jones, Christopher Purves, Iain Paterson, Susan Bickley, Emma Bell, Reinhard Hagen, Clive Bayley … and more.

There’s English Touring Opera at Buxton, also in November, presenting La Calisto by Cavalli (with Catherine Carby), Ulysses’ Homecoming by Monteverdi (with Katie Bray), and Xerxes by Handel.

After all that, a welcome dose of levity will be in the Royal Northern College’s December production of La Vie Parisienne by Offenbach, conducted by Andrew Greenwood and directed by Stuart Barker

In the March 2017 week by Opera North we get three nights of fairytale: Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, Humperdinck’s magical Hansel And Gretel (Katie Bray and Fflur Wyn, with Susan Bullock as the Witch), and Rossini’s romantic La Cenerentola (or Cinderella). And there’s Handel to follow at the RNCM: Theodora. So never say you don’t get much operatic choice.