Leeds
Kieron Tyler
“Keeping Control” were the watchwords adopted by The Manchester Musicians’ Collective, an organisation founded in April 1977 to bring local musicians together and give them platforms. On 23 May 1977, it put on its first show – also the first live show by The Fall. Instantly integral to Manchester and its music, the Collective went on to put out two compilation albums, 1979’s A Manchester Collection and 1980’s Unzipping The Abstract.“Where Were You” was originally the title of December 1978’s second single by The Mekons, a Leeds-based band formed the year earlier by students attending the Fine Read more ...
Joseph Middleton
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.” Replace a few of George Orwell’s words in 1984 and most musicians right now would find alarming resonance in the statement: “If you want a picture of the present, imagine a boot stamping out classical music – for ever.” Orwell’s slightly altered prophecy could be used to sum up the widespread cultural vandalism happening in the UK right now despite the fact we are world-leaders in this area (as everyone would know who watched the recent Coronation). Because of choices that are being made by a few Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Pearl Fishers is very much a mid-19th century Romantic opera, with a plot that’s basically a love triangle set in an exotic location. Its writers, Michel Carré and Eugène Cormon, were not the greatest of plot inventors, and after hearing the opening scene alone, you might think much the same about the inspiration of the music, beautifully crafted though it is.But then there’s that astonishing tune, attached first to the duet for the two men in love with memory of the same woman, “Au fond du temple saint”. Bizet knew a good thing when he wrote one, and he keeps bringing it back again and Read more ...
Joe Muggs
We are way, way past the point where it makes any sense to talk of jungle or drum’n’bass “revivals”. Thirty years from the emergence of jungle from the rave scene, its tempo and tropes have remained a staple sound for generation upon generation of clubbers, boy racers and festival goers. It is woven into the fabric of global, and particularly British, culture just as integrally as, say, indie rock guitars are.That said, it has lately had an upsurge in popularity, but it makes more sense to think of what’s happened in the Twenties as a consolidation. What we’ve seen is a young generation of Read more ...
Robert Beale
Rodula Gaitanou’s production of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos is a hugely entertaining treatment of an opera that brings its fair share of problems to any company, and the chief virtue of Opera North’s presentation (a co-production with Gothenburg Opera, now seen in the UK for the first time) is the wonderfully well suited casting.This is the 1916 version of the piece, the scenario adapted to position the Prologue (the first Act, essentially) in a 20th century film studio (Fellini's, the programme book tells us), rather than a wealthy dwelling in the Vienna of the past.Forget the Read more ...
Robert Beale
It’s good to think that there are some opera productions – not just compositions – that in themselves can have the status of classics. David Pountney’s 1980 interpretation of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen must be high on a list of contenders for that accolade. It was first seen at the Edinburgh Festival that year, performed by Scottish Opera in a co-production between them and Welsh National Opera.Now Opera North have revived it for their audiences, and it’s lost none of its inspirational magic. That comes both from Pountney’s English translation of the text and from the wonderful Read more ...
Robert Beale
Though billed as a “concert performance”, this was really much more than that. With the resources of their own theatre, Opera North’s team present a staging that employs a big, built-up and raked floor, with a simple platform in the centre and a starry-night black back-cloth, and their principals and chorus move and act in simple but effective style.There are costumes, there is theatre lighting, and there are sound effects – thunder and rushing wind noises tell us we’re visiting the land of the dead and abode of the Furies (as well as Gluck’s music, of course). I’ve seen poorer production Read more ...
Robert Beale
Within its own aspirations, Orpheus is a complete triumph. “Monteverdi reimagined”, as Opera North subtitled it from the start, is an attempt to unite (and contrast, and compare, and cross-fertilise) early baroque opera with South Asian classical music.That’s a big ambition, as the two might seem to have little in common. But Anna Himali Howard’s simple production concept of a marriage celebration, where Orpheus is a white British guy and Eurydice an Asian girl, set in the back garden of a semi-detached house – probably in Leeds – is a symbol of the whole enterprise.The design (Leslie Travers Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Music plays a big part in the life of Dwight, an 11-year-old black lad growing up in early 80s Leeds. He doesn't fit in at school, bullied because he is "slow", and he doesn't fit in outside school, would-be friends losing patience with him.But he does fit in at home, loved unequivocally by a protective mother, somewhat enviously by a bickering sister, and rather reluctantly by a preoccupied father. Like the records he plays on the gramophone, his life is about to spin – and he'll have to hold on to the warmth of family love in a cold world.Zodwa Nyoni's new play for the Kiln Theatre packs Read more ...
Robert Beale
Wagner, in his medievalist, pan-European, 19th century way, wanted Parsifal to be a blend of abstract and religious experience for his audiences at Bayreuth, calling it a “festival play for a stage consecration”. Questions for those performing it today include how to do justice to its philosophical baggage as well as its marvellous music, and whether to introduce new elements in the visual staging that the composer never thought of.Directing Opera North’s first-ever performance of the work, Sam Brown’s approach has avoided getting it mired too deep in the philosophy and restricted Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
One effect of the film I Get Knocked Down, a playfully constructed journey around the life of Chumbawamba vocalist Dunstan Bruce, is to remind that socio-political rage was once woven into the fabric of popular music. Old footage from the band’s Leeds squat, Southview House, in the early Eighties, shows one of them jovially composing a song called “Norman Fowler is a Shit-stain in Margaret Thatcher’s Underpants” on an acoustic guitar (Norman Fowler was Thatcher’s Secretary of State at the time). It’s funny and silly, but also made me long for the era when art-fury was a common cultural Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“Play something we can dance to,” heckles a fan. “Fuck off, we are not a dance band,” fires back Wayne Hussey, leader of The Mission. He’s right. They’re not. But still there is dancing.One especially notable aspect of this gig is the total and vocal devotion of The Mission’s fans. Not only do they sing along loudly, en masse, to most songs, but they have their own football-style chants, sometimes making reference to Mission arcana beyond this writer’s knowledge. The band play the gig straight and sturdy, without banter, but the crowd lifts it.In terms of show, then, there are no bells’n’ Read more ...