A taste of the opera in Leeds... for a tenner

The Leeds-based company will present 11 main stage productions for 2017/18, including eight new productions and three revivals.

Highlights include the season’s launch, The Little Greats: six short operas with huge emotions. The festival of one-act operas in the autumn will also feature £10 tickets for anyone who is new to opera.

General director Richard Mantle said: “What better way to start the new season than with a festival which really does demonstrate the diversity of operatic style, and the indomitable company spirit which is at the heart of everything we do. Opera is an enormous collective endeavour, and we hope in The Little Greats festival season, that our audiences will really feel as though they are on this incredible journey of discovery with us, as we fuse some rarely performed pieces into new pairings with enormous power and energy.

“I am especially pleased that we have been able to make the £10 ticket offer for first-time attendees available for this festival season. This has been underwritten by the Opera North Future Fund, reflecting the generous philanthropy of our core private supporters and their desire to help Opera North achieve genuine new audience development. This is a real demonstration of how passionately the opera audience wants opera to survive as an art form and how keen existing audiences are for more new people to experience the art form they love.”

Wagner’s Ring cycle will also be made available free online from next month. There are performances too in Hull to mark its year as City of Culture and two performances of Benjamin Britten’s opera Billy Budd at the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk in June. And next February Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni will be staged at Leeds Grand.