A groundbreaking new staging of Monteverdi’s opera Orpheus is set to open in Leeds, before touring northern theatres alongside Verdi’s La traviata, and concerts of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.
La traviata
Opera North’s Autumn season opens on 29 September at Leeds Grand Theatre with a revival of one of Verdi’s most popular and profoundly moving operas, directed by Alessandro Talevi and conducted by Jonathan Webb.
Talevi and designer Madeleine Boyd set this stylish production in Belle Époque Paris, where the dizzying social whirl of gambling dens and high society parties contrasts with the tender love story of an impossible relationship between a free-spirited courtesan and a wealthy young man.
As Alfredo, Maltese tenor Nico Darmanin makes his Opera North debut alongside British soprano Alison Langer as Violetta.
La traviata opens at Leeds Grand Theatre on Thursday 29 September until 2 October, before touring to Theatre Royal Newcastle, The Lowry Salford Quays and Theatre Royal Nottingham.
Orpheus
Orpheus, a reimagining of one of the earliest surviving operas, Monteverdi’s 1607 work L’Orfeo, weaves western with Indian classical music. This new version will feature additional composition and arrangements by Jasdeep Singh Degun, working as co-Music Director with early music expert Laurence Cummings. Some passages are restored and arranged for Indian classical and western baroque instruments.
The opera will be sung in Italian and Urdu, with additional sections sung in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi and Bengali. There will be English titles at all performances.
The project has grown out of Opera North’s longstanding collaborative relationship with South Asian Arts-uk, a Leeds based centre of excellence in Indian classical music.
Directed by Anna Himali Howard with sets and costumes by Leslie Travers, the setting of one of the most famous Greek myths is relocated to a contemporary wedding party, on the day of the wedding of Orpheus (Nicholas Watts), a musician of mythical power, to Eurydice (Ashnaa Sasikaran). But their joy is shattered when Eurydice dies suddenly, and Orpheus, heartbroken, vows to travel to the Underworld to find his new wife and return her to life.
North soprano Amy Freston and award-winning vocalist Deepa Nair Rasiya share the prologue role of Music, while other parts are taken by performers including Chandra Chakraborty as Proserpine, Dean Robinson as Pluto, Yarlinie Thanabalasingam as Hope and Kezia Bienek as The Messenger. In addition to playing in the ensemble, santoor player Kaviraj Singh will perform the role of the ferryman Charon, while esraj and tar shehnai player Kirpal Singh Panesar will also sing the part of Apollo.
Also joining the cast are opera singers Frances Gregory, Claire Lees, Simon Grange and Xavier Hetherington, alongside many other eminent performers of Indian classical music in the UK, including Birmingham-based Hindustani singer Sanchita Pal, London based singer Chiranjeeb Chakraborty, and Delhi-born khayal singer Vijay Rajput, now based in Newcastle.
An onstage orchestra of 19 players includes a baroque ensemble of violin, viola, cello, bass, trumpet, percussion, harp, harpsichord, lirone and theorbo, as well as Indian classical instruments including sitar, tabla, santoor, esraj and bansuri.
Jasdeep Singh Degun, a Leeds-born composer and virtuoso sitar player, was recently announced as Opera North’s Artist-in-Residence, Jasdeep’s previous work with the Company includes Partition, a 2017 collaboration with South Asian Arts-uk in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the division of India and Pakistan, and Arya, a concerto for sitar and orchestra, which premiered in 2020.
Jasdeep Singh Degun, Music Director, Orpheus, and Artist-in-Residence, Opera North:
“I’m very happy to be beginning my tenure as artist-in-residence at Opera North with the new and exciting production of Orpheus. As well as acting as joint Music Director on the opera with the brilliant Laurence Cummings, I have been fortunate to compose new music alongside Monteverdi’s masterpiece. I’m very excited to be bringing such a stellar cast of Indian classical musicians and vocalists to Leeds – these are, quite literally, the best of the best Indian classical musicians in the UK!
Indian classical music is an improvised tradition based on very strict melodic and rhythmical frameworks called raag and taal, while the nature of 16thcentury opera has a lot of scope for embellishment and improvisation. This makes the two traditions quite compatible with each other, in the sense that there is much opportunity for the performers to breathe life into the written music.
In the hope of finding an equal and meaningful meeting point for the operatic and Indian classical traditions, it felt necessary to have sections of new music composed based on Indian classical music. The challenge has been to find the right balance between the different sound worlds, to allow the Indian classical music and the Monteverdi opera to co-exist. I have tried to let the story and music of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo drive the composition process for the new parts: the raags I have selected and the resulting melodies have been informed by the original Monteverdi, however set to the traditional Indian classical taals.
The new music has been composed to play to the strengths of each vocalist as well as acting as a springboard for improvisation so each performance will be different each night – that’s the beauty of Indian classical music and I’m very keen to showcase that on the operatic stage.”
Anna Himali Howard, Director, Orpheus:
“I am enormously honoured and excited to be working with an incredible team of artists and musicians to bring together two exquisite musical forms. We have chosen to set the ancient story of Orpheus and Eurydice against a backdrop of modern Britain, in which the love and grief of ordinary people feels epic. As the musicians and singers gather together to tell the story in a garden, the music will transport us to mythical worlds.
This is a very special collaboration, and it presents us with unique opportunities to express the themes of the story: the joy of love, the pain of loss, and what happens when the underworld comes to you. We are able to draw from multiple traditions, disciplines and aesthetics to tell a story which has a universal experience at its heart. I hope that audiences will be captivated and moved by the transcendent music and intimate storytelling of the piece.”
Keranjeet Kaur Virdee, Chief Executive and Artistic Director, South Asian Arts-uk:
“This collaboration with Opera North celebrates South Asian Arts-uk’s 25-year commitment to ‘Preserving the traditional, facilitating the contemporary’: truly investing in talent and ensuring that it has an environment in which to grow and fly. The outcome is that we have artists who have the confidence and ability to collaborate on bold new expressions, without the need to apologise for their own identity or to undermine others.
I imagine that when Monteverdi composed Orpheus he would have met with diverse musicians who influenced him creatively. Now, through this collaboration, we have the opportunity to bring together a cast who are masters in their own right, who can break down boundaries and cross borders through music to touch our hearts and minds. Ultimately, they remind us that we are all humans with lots of shared similarities and particularities that deserve to be celebrated unapologetically.”
Orpheus is at Leeds Grand Theatre from 14 October to 22 October.
Cover photograph: Nicholas Watts (Orpheus) and Ashnaa Sasikaran (Eurydice).
