Opening doors at The Howard
January 26, 2009
Ron Simpson on the Howard Assembly Room’s opening programme
At just after 5.30 on Saturday evening, January 24, the staircase from the dress circle at Leeds Grand was crowded with people as Opera North juggled four finishing or upcoming events. A performance of Skin Deep was scheduled for 7.15, with its accompanying pre-opera talk, but the real cause of the crush was the coincidence of a late-running afternoon presentation on cosmetic surgery and society, the subject of the new operetta, and a 5.45 Twilight Event, both in the Howard Assembly Room.
The Opera North/Grand Theatre Transformation has had many benefits, from comfortable seats to rediscovered tiles to vast improvements to backstage and office areas, but I suspect that, from the viewpoint of the operagoer, the renewal of the Assembly Room may prove to have the bigger effect. Entered from the between-circles landing or through the newly refurbished Grand Hall (with decor that looks rather like a giant piano as designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh), the Assembly Room combines Victorian splendour with clean modern lines. A shallow curving balcony runs round three walls and the main floor area is a flexible seating or rehearsal area. It will serve as the base for the Orchestra of Opera North and also stage smaller-scale public performances, thus bringing activity and a sense of occasion to the entire theatre, not just the auditorium.
Opening Doors, the launch of the Howard Assembly Room, featured 13 varied events in the space of 10 days. Big-name performers included Joanna MacGregor, I Fagiolini, Rory Bremner and Tiger Lillies, reprising songs from the astonishing Shockheaded Peter, a huge success at West Yorkshire Playhouse that I later saw wowing audiences as far afield as Vienna!
However, I chose to sample two events featuring the new resident of the Assembly Room, the Orchestra of Opera North. On the Tuesday evening a very young audience enjoyed Suzie Templeton’s Oscar-winning film of Peter and the Wolf, beautifully animated and scarily comic, with the drama and music heightened by having Prokofiev’s music played live by a score of musicians from the orchestra conducted by Justin Doyle. Before that Darius Battiwalla provided frisky piano accompaniment and audience-friendly commentary for three ancient short films, including a surreal sample of the great Georges Melies.
Saturday evening’s Twilight Event, featuring the Opera North Brass Ensemble, was remarkable in several ways. For a start, the short recital finished little more than half an hour before the musicians took to the pit for David Sawer’s Skin Deep – and, in terms of the adaptability of the players, 24 hours before the company’s searing concert performance of Elektra was to be repeated at Gateshead. Second, of the six players, four have been with the company since its foundation in 1978 and two have clocked up some 45 years of service between them – the rapport between the musicians is hardly surprising!
The music was good, too. Topped and tailed with a Richard Rodney Bennett fanfare and a George Gershwin encore, the programme consisted of three short Bernstein suites, plus Chris Bradley’s arrangement of ‘Tonight’, with the brass players co-opted as extra percussionists. The Opera North orchestra has more experience than most of re-creating Broadway-style pzazz, and this showed in the jazzier Bernstein episodes, notably a crackling version of ‘Times Square’ from On The Town.
Of course, it’s not likely that this rate of occupancy will be repeated on a regular basis, but from February 6 to March 1 United Visual Artists are mounting what’s described as “an engulfing new creation” in the hall and on March 7 and 8 the Opera Group and London Sinfonietta visit with a superb double-bill of short operas by George Benjamin and Harrison Birtwistle.
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