New season announced for 2024 – 2025

We’re thrilled to announce our new season for 2024 – 2025, featuring shows full of magic, mystery and magnificent music.

We’re finding more ways than ever to make the extraordinary experiences of great opera and music accessible for everyone, including 6pm start times for some performances, more matinee performances, English subtitles at all performances, and sign-interpretation, audio description and touch tours on selected dates.

New to opera ticket schemes are available at Leeds and all tour venues, encouraging newcomers to experience opera for the first time, including the Try it ON scheme offering £20 tickets for first-timers, £10 tickets for Under 30s and students, and free tickets for 16- to 20-year-olds.

A new show for all the family, The Big Opera Adventure, will also see the orchestra and singers from Opera North embarking on a thrilling quest through some of opera’s most colourful characters and memorable tunes, with performances in Huddersfield, Leeds and Salford during the autumn months.

The new season opens with Mozart’s ever popular The Magic Flute. James Brining, Artistic Director and CEO of Leeds Playhouse, returns to direct this perfect opera for newer audiences of all ages.

A special 90-minute version, The Magic Flute Lite will offer the same production quality in a compact format, especially suitable for families, schools and anyone who may enjoy a shorter daytime performance.

The magic continues with a revival of Benjamin Britten’s beguiling take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Martin Duncan, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s hilariously inventive Gothic parody, Ruddigore, in a production by Jo Davies which was hailed as an instant classic in its first run.

Ensuring opera reaches as wide an audience as possible, there will additionally be a Relaxed and Dementia-friendly Ruddigore performance in Leeds at 2pm on Wednesday 30 October.

In January 2025, there will be a limited run of three unique performances in Leeds of Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s 1948 musical Love Life, conducted by leading Weill expert James Holmes and directed by Matthew Eberhardt. Opera North is working with the Kurt Weill Foundation towards creating a full recording at these performances, of a work which has never received a definitive cast recording.

A new production of Richard Wagner’s thrilling, tempestuous music drama The Flying Dutchman, in many ways the ideal introduction to his musical universe, will be directed by Annabel Arden and conducted by Garry Walker.

The season concludes with the next of Opera North’s highly regarded dramatic concert stagings. Performances of Verdi’s exhilarating Simon Boccanegra begin at St George’s Hall, Bradford, during the city’s 2025 UK City of Culture celebrations, before visiting concert halls in Liverpool, Gateshead, Nottingham and Hull and London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Ticket Packages for Opera North’s 2024 – 2025 season are on sale from 26 March, with public on sale from 29 May.