Opera North

With general administrators Nicholas Payne and, later, Ian Ritchie and Richard Mantle, the company continued to bring operatic novelties, as well as a wide selection of familiar works, to its audience in the North of England and further afield.

[10] In June 2019, Opera North announced the appointments of Garry Walker as its next music director, and of Antony Hermus as its new principal guest conductor.

At the request of the Bridlington primary school whose 300 children performed in the opera, the company asked for the removal of an explicit reference to a gay character's sexuality from one of the scenes.

[15] Opera North has given world premières of the following operas: Rebecca by Wilfred Josephs (1983), Caritas by Robert Saxton (1991), Baa, Baa, Black Sheep by Michael Berkeley (1993), Playing Away by Benedict Mason (1994), The Nightingale's to Blame by Simon Holt (1998), Jonathan Dove's The Adventures of Pinocchio (2007) and Swanhunter (2009), and Skin Deep by David Sawer and Armando Iannucci (2009).

The first was Jerome Kern's Show Boat (in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company) in 1989, and productions of Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd followed in 1998.

[17] Latterly, the works of Kurt Weill have become something of a speciality, with productions of Love Life (1996), One Touch of Venus and The Seven Deadly Sins in 2004, Arms and the Cow in 2006, and Street Scene in 2020.

In 2009, Let 'Em Eat Cake, the sequel to Of Thee I Sing, was produced, and in 2012 Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel was performed in Leeds, Salford and London.

Opera North has worked extensively with electronic composer Mira Calix, commissioning Dead Wedding (for the Manchester International Festival 2007) Onibus (2008) and the installation Chorus (2009) for the opening of the Howard Assembly Room with visual artist UVA.