Less than a fortnight since the latest edict about English National Opera – the shortlisted destinations for the company’s enforced move out of London are now officially Birmingham, Bristol, Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham – the crowds spilled across the pavement outside the Grand Theatre in Leeds. Concerns that the north is somehow already opera-saturated have been aired repeatedly amid the grim wranglings of recent months. Greater Manchester and Nottingham are both Opera North turf. What’s more, lest we forget, the company started life as English National Opera North. But the opening night of its new production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers looked very much like business as usual – and good business too, if the mostly packed stalls were anything to go by.
Directed by Matthew Eberhardt and conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, The Pearl Fishers is the latest in Opera North’s decade-long series of concert stagings. While Leeds town hall is closed for refurbishment, they’re at the Grand – a little less concert, a little more staging. Or so you’d hope. Last year, Wagner’s Parsifal was Opera North at its best, musically exhilarating and dramatically powerful in a semi-staging by Sam Brown in which the chorus and orchestra shared the spotlight.
