Opera North Reveals Details of Green Season

As work ramps up on the trio of innovative productions comprising Opera North’s first sustainable season, the Company has revealed some of the transformations it is making in search of more environmentally responsible ways to bring its operas to the stage. 

The Green Season will open this September at Leeds Grand Theatre with Olivia Fuchs’ new production of Verdi’s Falstaff, conducted by Music Director Garry Walker, with Henry Waddington in the title role and Kate Royal as Alice Ford. James Hurley’s new production of La rondine, conducted by Kerem Hasan, transplants Puccini’s shimmering tale of careless love to 30s Paris and the Riviera, with Galina Averina as Magda and Sébastien Guèze as Ruggero.

Completing the season, Masque of Might is a new work from one of the world’s most eminent opera directors, Sir David Pountney: a contemporary ‘eco-entertainment’ told through the music of Henry Purcell. Harry Bicket conducts a cast including Anna Dennis as Elena/Witch, Callum Thorpe as Diktat, and Andri Björn Róbertsson as Nebulous/Activist/Wolf.

Sustainable Productions

The Leeds-based Company’s work on the season is being guided by the Theatre Green Book, an industry standard brought together during lockdown by theatre-makers and sustainability experts.

Co-founder and General Manager of Sustainable Arts in Leeds (SAIL) Jamie Saye is acting as Opera North’s Sustainability Champion for the season. “The Theatre Green Book pulls together existing guidance and creates a shared standard for environmentally responsible theatre”, he explains. “It helps us to look at every aspect of our productions, buildings and operations – and even the ways in which our audiences get to and from our performances. 

“Sustainability begins at the outset, with the concept and vision, and it’s critical that the whole Company works together on achieving it. It’s literally built into the fabric of these productions: one of our first tasks was to put together a materials inventory that lists the sources of everything used in sets, props and costumes, and planned disposal routes after the show”.

“We’re at the point where there’s a real need for this change: we have to explore how we can make shows sustainably”, says Leslie Travers, whose set designs for all three productions feature interchangeable elements. This sort of resourcefulness is key to the three productions’ journey to the stage, he says: “It’s one thing having an idea, but this is about how we respond to that with what’s at hand. So my process for this season started at the Stores, with Opera North’s phenomenal Production team”.

The collective spirit is of experiment, adventure and discovery, Leslie enthuses: “What’s really important is that the Green Season bares its soul in terms of what we’re exploring and trying to achieve. Although our incredibly talented team and our local artists have already produced jaw-dropping and exciting work, we don’t feel that we have to be perfect in that formal sense”.

“Opera North is aiming for this season to meet the Green Book’s Intermediate level, which is hugely ambitious”, says Jamie Saye. “Even if we don’t achieve that benchmark, the important thing is that this process will have led to step changes throughout the Company, from supply chains to lighting rigs, to transport and touring practice, even working with transport providers to ensure that audiences can get to and from performances with the least environmental impact. It’s just the first stage of the journey: Opera North has committed to carrying on this interrogation of the way it works in the long term”. 

Sustainable Sets and Props

“Sustainability isn’t something new for us”, says Production Office Co-ordinator Laura Hart. The Production team has already been at work for months, gathering props and materials from their base at Opera North’s vast Scenic Stores, a treasure trove of sets and costumes from the Company’s four decades of performances. “Nothing ever goes in the bin”, she insists. “We reuse almost everything as a matter of course, from the truck bases that move scenic elements around the stage, to steel tubing, to costumes and props”. Yet, she says, the Green Season has driven some fundamental changes in the way the team works. 

Plundering the miles of shelves and boxed-up sets at the Stores has brought back memories for Leslie, an Opera North regular who has conjured the settings of some of the Company’s most celebrated productions: “I love this history of the shows we’ve done together, and I’ve loved giving them another life for the Green Season”. The objects and fixtures that he has selected, he says, will tell part of the Company’s story, as well as the narrative of each opera: “Falstaff, for example, features windows from Figaro which we’ve resized and adapted, the sky from Orpheus at the back, and there are shelves full of objects – reminiscent of the Stores – that frame and comment on the action, and reappear as elements in the sets of the other two operas.

“The object that I really love is our magnificent 1970s caravan, Falstaff’s home, which is then transformed into a theatre in Masque of Might”. One of the few elements that was newly acquired, it was sourced from The Myrtle Tavern in nearby Meanwood via a social media call. “It’s full of beautiful vintage features, and it turned out to be amazingly close to what Leslie had envisioned in his model of the set”, says Laura.

“Antlers are another distinctive element in the Falstaff set, forming a chandelier, an abstracted forest, an elaborate chair”, Leslie continues. “They’re absolutely beautiful as a material, and of course they’re a renewable resource: the deer at Harewood House shed them naturally each year, and they’ve been saved for us”.

Taking advantage of these local resources and talent has been one of the most important shifts in how the Production team works, Laura explains: “Where we’d usually have sets fabricated in Cardiff or London, we’ve been doing a lot of jobs on site here with local artisans. Other specialist work has been done at Ralph Tricker’s workshop in Mirfield; and Waterside Forge, a family-run fabricator in Bramley, built the movable trucks from recycled material. The fabric for the ‘rug’ in Falstaff was taken from the set of Katya Kabanova, resized in Bradford, the pattern for the stencil was cut in Northern Ballet’s workshop, and it’s being painted here by the artist Ali Allen, who’s based locally”.

Masque of Might: a ‘recycled’ opera

The season’s world premiere, Sir David Pountney’s Masque of Might, is ‘green’ in both form and content. It tells an urgently contemporary story of a tyrannical political leader and an impending climate crisis through “recycled” arias and excerpts from throughout Purcell’s career. Sir David describes it as “a major new dramatic piece by, arguably, Britain’s greatest ever composer”. 

Digging into a 40-volume set of the composer’s complete works during lockdown, he collated “amazing material: sacred, theatrical, dance music, a lot of which we don’t hear from year to year because it’s not in a very performable state for a modern audience. 

“I just listened to the material and let the story emerge. One of the things that made an impression was the fantastic amount of apocalyptic language in this late-17th century body of work: effluent flowing into the rivers, bringing death everywhere; corpses adding to it; glaciers melting. And then there was a lot of music about power, and rulers of one sort or another.

“Gradually the narrative took shape of the birth of a horrendous ruler - Diktat - which is foreseen by mythological figures. He imprisons people, tortures them and wreaks havoc on the environment, while claiming that climate change is a hoax. But slowly nature takes over; trees and animals begin to talk – there’s a lot of this in Purcell.

“It’s quite fast-moving, from one number to the next with no dialogue; it proceeds by juxtaposition. A lot of it’s virtuosic, performed by three basses, two countertenors, a soprano and a tenor. It’s true to the spirit of a masque, which is basically a period variety show, an entertainment with a loose vestige of a plot linking a sequence of show-off arias for singers and dances, with staged spectacle foremost”.

In common with all of the season’s creatives, Sir David is keen to make the point that sustainability has not compromised the visual richness of the stagings. Leslie Travers has delighted in the challenge of “creating this spectacular, celebratory world from whatever was available to us”. 

Sustainable Costumes

Inventiveness has overcome the restrictions that inevitably come with a more responsible way of working, says Masque of Might’s costume designer Marie-Jeanne Lecca. 

“There are 60 costumes that we’ve had to focus on, for principals, Chorus and dancers. Given the brief, we had to start really early on in order to prepare and source everything timely and efficiently. The Opera North Costume department has been absolutely marvellous in their commitment and assistance at every step of the way. They developed a fabric for the dancers’ period garments using only black remnants, and we also created two ornate, golden baroque costumes - all from materials in stock.

“But the costume of the Witch of Endor, who lives in the caravan, is my favourite: it’s made entirely from recycled bits of tablecloth and curtains, plastic bottles, forks, remnants and rubbish that we’ve put together”. 

Gabrielle Dalton, too, has worked miracles with her opulent designs for La rondine, “heavily influenced by the Paris of Kiki de Montparnasse and Brassaï”, and moving to the resorts of the French Riviera for the third act. “The opera really is Magda’s story, so we’ve taken a psychological approach to the staging that puts her at the centre”, adds director James Hurley. Stucco-clad art deco walls frame a public space of nightclubs and salons in Leslie’s set, while the shelving is integrated to offer opportunities for intimacy or voyeurism. “As Magda’s world turns on its head at the climax of Act II, we turn the structures of the set around to reflect it”, explains James. 

Audience travel

Local transport infrastructure will also have a role to play in reducing the season’s carbon footprint. Bus operators across West Yorkshire have collaborated with Opera North on an MCard Opera DaySaver ticket, available via the MCard Mobile app – the first initiative of its kind in the region. The reduced-price pass will be available from 28 September to 28 October, to cover bus travel after 12pm to and from evening performances and matinees. Opera North has programmed an increased number of afternoon performances to make it easier for audiences to use public transport. 

Transdev, the group of local bus operators across Lancashire and Yorkshire, is providing Opera North audiences with 2-for-1 tickets on their routes to and from Leeds on the 36, 7, Aireline, Flyer, and Coastliner buses. From September until the end of the Green Season, travellers just need to produce a ticket for an opera or Howard Assembly Room event to take advantage of the offer.

Howard Assembly Room and Kino

Complementing the mainstage programme, on 27 September the Howard Assembly Room will stage Meltwater, the culmination of a project that has engaged communities in Dewsbury and India through the collaboration of Dewsbury-based arts organisation Manasamitra and the University of Leeds’ Priestley International Centre for Climate and Water@Leeds. Led by Indian classical vocalist Supriya Nagarajan, this haunting performance explores the awesome creative and destructive power of water through personal narratives of flood and drought, field recordings, live music and footage of melting glaciers. Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin’s poetic account of a young girl and her father navigating the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in the Louisiana bayou, returns to the big screen in the venue on 30 October.

The Howard Assembly Room hosts Opera North’s contribution to Leeds’ citywide Light Night festival on 12 and 13 October, a further meditation on water by an ensemble curated by vocalist, violinist, songwriter and composer Alice Zawadzki. She anticipates “exploring the lowest and deepest of resonances with double bass and electronics, the rhythms of waves with percussion and drums, and echoes of melody akin to gulls, shanties and the wind with voices, violins, kamanche, sticks, bottles and strings”.

Looking forward to these events across Opera North’s stages, the Company’s restaurant, Kino, is also taking a leaf out of the Green Book. The kitchen at the acclaimed restaurant on New Briggate reopens on 19 July, with new Head Chef Josh Whitehead putting the spotlight on the sustainable, seasonal and local. His first menu includes Yorkshire pork smoked over hay and served with his special burnt apple mustard, and a contemporary take on an Arctic roll flavoured with wild woodruff foraged by Josh near his home in Leeds.

Opera North’s Green Season opens at Leeds Grand Theatre with Falstaff on 28 September, followed by the world premiere of Masque of Might on 6 October, and Puccini’s La rondine on 20 October. All three productions will tour to Newcastle Theatre Royal, Theatre Royal, Nottingham, and The Lowry, Salford Quays. 

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