Leeds Left Bank Opera Festival

29th-31st August 2017

The soaring Gothic interior of St Margaret's of Antioch in Burley, Leeds, is now home to Left Bank - a beautiful arts and creative space.

Leeds based Northern Opera Group's inaugural festival in this atmospheric venue includes two contrasting English operas and a packed schedule of related talks and debates.

Thomas Arne's Alfred (Alfred the Great) was hugely popular with 18th century audiences. Originally staged as a masque, Alfred was extensively revised and premiered as an opera with spoken dialogue in 1753.

Production director David Ward creates a close rapport with the characters by arranging the audience seating around the stage (the church nave). Balance is enhanced by placing the orchestra in the chancel, to the rear of the stage.

The five splendid young singers - costumed circa 878 AD - demonstrate their mastery of florid vocal style. Characterisations are plausible and their place in the hierarchy of the historical narrative is always clear.

William Wallace as King Alfred, Joe Bolger as his son Edward, Catrin Woodruff as Queen Eltruda, William Branston as the loyal yeoman Corin, and Helen Stanley as his wife Emma all deserve the highest praise. And how thrilling to hear Rule Britannia in its original context - the familiar lines are declaimed with relish by Alfred who bears aloft the ancient Wessex flag.

The orchestra, conducted by Christopher Pelly, combined clarity of texture with atmospheric colours.

A couple of centuries separate Alfred from Benjamin Britten's sung-through comic opera Albert Herring. In the fictional Suffolk village of Loxford, blameless Albert is chosen to replace the traditional Queen of the May - due to the absence of any virtuous village maidens.

Aspect Opera's warmhearted and boisterous production has been delighting audiences at York's Rowntree Park. Caolan Kearney both directs and sings the role of Mr Gedge the emollient cleric. A young and talented ensemble cast is led by Alex Hume whose purity of tone conveys Albert's virginal innocence.

Rachel Cawte has moments of poignancy as Mrs Herring, Albert's booze soaked mum. She is poles apart from Jennifer Rust's genteel Lady Billows, guardian of village morality. So too are Albert's friends - easy going butcher's hunk Sid (Chris Murphy) and his girlfriend Nancy (Emily Hodkinson).

Conductor Thomas Hawkes drew crisp and lively playing from the orchestra, although the over-enthusiastic timpanist occasionally swamped crucial words.

Leeds Left Bank Opera Festival returns next year to bring artists and audiences together in celebration of rare and wonderful operas. The City's cultural scene has been crying out for such an event.

Geoffrey Mogridge