Opera North streams Sins
The proposed tour by Opera North of a concert performance of Wagner’s Parsifal, which was scheduled to visit Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on June 2, 2021, has been postponed. The company says it is committed to revisiting the project in a future year, but the scale of the forces required, with 130 musicians on stage, make it impossible with social distancing in place for the performers.
The company intends to fill the dates booked for Parsifal with an evening of music from the Ring cycle, conducted by Richard Farnes and using Jonathan Dove’s orchestrations, intended as a companion piece to the 2016 Opera North Ring cycle, currently free to watch online.
Ticket-holders for Parsifal may choose to apply for a refund.
Opera North has two livestream performances scheduled before the end of the year, beginning on Saturday November 21 at 6pm, when Gary Clarke’s new production of Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins will be available to watch for £10. The production was to have opened in Leeds in a double bill with Handel’s Acis and Galatea and will be the company’s first staged show since March. Conducted by James Holmes, it will be available on demand for 48 hours only.
In December Mark Wigglesworth conducts a dramatic concert performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio, directed by Matthew Eberhardt with a cast including Rachel Nicholls, Toby Spence, Robert Hayward and Brindley Sherratt. Originally due to run at Leeds Town Hall for four performances from November 29, it will now livestream at 7pm on Saturday December 12 and be available on demand for seven days at a ticket price of £15.
Main Image: Seven Deadly Sins credit Tristram Kenton