Sometimes it feels as though British folklore gets stranger the closer you look at it. The Devil’s Den, an hour-long opera with words and music by Isabella Gellis, is certainly one of the odder shows to have been hosted by Opera North. Following a try-out at the Nevill Holt festival in summer 2024, it was being fully staged for the first time here, courtesy of Shadwell Opera and the Sheffield City Morris.
Morris dancing in opera? That was being claimed as a first. The dancers filled the interludes between scenes like a hanky-waving Greek chorus, their bells and sticks adding another layer to Gellis’s music.
