Opera North’s home at the Grand Theatre Leeds now boasts a resplendent auditorium, with lacquered walls and raked stalls, so that I have now finally seen the stage; and above all greatly improved acoustics. More remains to be done, as the news release grimly informs us, stressing that Phase II of the plan ‘will have a heavy emphasis on maximising the public access to and enjoyment and interpretation of the theatre’s heritage environment’, and thereby incidentally reminding us how much of the £21 million already spent has found its way into the pockets of consultants.
The new era has been launched with a production of the most ebullient and tuneful of Verdi’s tragedies, Rigoletto, by Charles Edwards. It builds on — to put it politely — Jonathan Miller’s celebrated updating, relocating it in the porn-ruled 1960s, the Duca a monstrously unappealing thug with a taste for silk boxers, who would only elicit Gilda’s love if she were far kinkier than anything in the music or action suggests she is.
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