Opera North has launched a ‘Green Season’, which means (among other things) that the sets and costumes for its new Falstaff are recycled. On one level, that’s nothing new: this eternally underfunded company has been performing miracles of sustainability for years now, and there’s usually at least one production each season that looks like it’s been cobbled together from the lumber room. A few seasons back, when ON rebooted their ‘little greats’ season of one-act operas, they mixed ’n’ matched sets between wildly different operas, with cheerful abandon.
Sir John lives in a caravan and quaffs sack in his underpants – shades of Jez Butterworth’s Rooster Byron
Still, it’s a perfectly laudable aim, even if it requires some Olympic-level mental gymnastics regarding the content of the operas themselves. The director, Olivia Fuchs, is more than up for the challenge. ‘I think it could be true that Falstaff is giving us a lesson in how to live within limited means and have fun,’ she observes in the programme book.
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