Fidelio, Opera North online review - less is really more

★★★★ FIDELIO, OPERA NORTH ONLINE Adaptation leaves Beethoven's music in all its glory

Adaptation leaves Beethoven's music in all its glory

Adaptability is the name of the game for big companies in the music business now. And Opera North’s streamed presentation of Beethoven's Fidelio from inside Leeds Town Hall is a prime example of just how adaptable things need to be.

Lu, Orchestre National de Lille, Bloch, Leeds Town Hall - polish and precision in Ravel and Debussy

★★★★★ LU, ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE LILLE, BLOCH, LEEDS Polish and precision

Fabulous playing from a crack French ensemble

French orchestras haven’t sounded distinctively Gallic for decades; François-Xavier Roth’s brilliant period band Les Siécles does use idiosyncratic French instruments but their polish and sheen is very modern. Still, close your eyes while Alexandre Bloch’s Orchestre National de Lille are playing Ravel and you’re struck by the polish, the elegance of the playing. Open them and marvel at how Bloch’s dance-like podium manner is matched by the musicians’ fluid movements.

Street Scene, Opera North review - a true ensemble achievement

★★★★★ STREET SCENE, OPERA NORTH True ensemble achievement in Weill's 'Broadway opera'

Youth to the fore in Kurt Weill’s brilliant ‘Broadway opera’

Kurt Weill’s “Broadway opera” – his own preferred description – is an extraordinary and brilliant piece of work. Its music ranges from the seriously dramatic to fun numbers like the "Ice Cream Sextet" and the jitterbug dance song “Moon Faced, Starry Eyed”; there’s a lot of spoken-dialogue-with-music, as well as solos, duets and all manner of ensembles; and the story is both comic and tragic.

Dinosaur Pile-Up, O2 Institute, Birmingham review - grungy punk poppers end the weekend on a high

★★★★ DINOSAUR PILE-UP, O2 INSTITUTE, BIRMINGHAM Leeds grungy punk poppers chase the winter blues away

Leeds grungers chase the winter blues away

Dinosaur Pile-Up may have been around for more than a decade, but it would be fair to say that their career has been something of a slow burn. Indeed, while thanking tonight’s support acts, main man Matt Bigland claimed that they’d supported more bands than any other group in the UK. The release of 2019’s Celebrity Mansions album looks like it may be the shot in the arm that Dinosaur Pile-Up have been waiting for, though. This weekend saw them sell out Birmingham’s O2 Institute.

CD: Biscuithead & the Biscuit Badgers - Thought Porridge

Long-awaited fourth album from playful Leeds four-piece

I was hooked after perusing Thought Porridge’s track listing; who wouldn’t want to hear songs with titles like “The British Cactus & Succulent Society” or “Mournful Colouring Book”? The latter is laugh-out-loud funny, its downbeat list of subjects including “a graph showing a downward trend in life expectancy/A tonsillectomy”, jauntily intoned by lead vocalist Dean Murray against a parping brass backdrop. “A dropped ice cream, a forgotten dream,” goes another line.

The Greek Passion, Opera North - pertinence and power

★★★★ THE GREEK PASSION, OPERA NORTH Good versus evil in rural Greece

Good versus evil in rural Greece

Martinů's The Greek Passion is a bold choice as a season opener, all the more so given that Opera North are staging the rarely-seen original version of his 1957 opera. Commissioned for Covent Garden then shabbily ditched, this is faster moving and more cinematic than the radically rewritten edition performed in Zurich two years after Martinů's death in 1959. Based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s bestseller Christ Recrucified, it’s now alarmingly pertinent, a tale of refugees arriving in a small Greek village preparing to stage an Easter Passion play.

'This goes beyond music and drama': tenor Nicky Spence on Martinů's 'The Greek Passion'

BEYOND MUSIC AND DRAMA Tenor Nicky Spence on Martinů's 'The Greek Passion'

On his Christ-playing character in Opera North's new production of a Czech masterpiece

I’m a big fanboy of Czech music, Janáček and Martinů especially, but I’d never seen The Greek Passion before being cast as Manolios in Opera North’s new production, as it remains quite a rarity in the opera house. For those who don’t know the work, it tells of a group of refugees who arrive in a village as the residents there are preparing for their Easter Passion Play.

Aida, Opera North review - militarism soundly subverted

★★★★ AIDA, OPERA NORTH Militarism soundly subverted

Annabel Arden’s vision and Richard Armstrong’s conducting make a powerful mix

Opera North created something approaching a new art form when they performed Wagner’s Ring in "concert stagings", putting their large orchestra in full view, with singers symbolically dressed and given limited front-of-stage space, and a continuous projected screen backdrop.