Opera North's new music director Richard Farnes is taking charge of the Leeds-based company at a time of enormous upheaval, but he couldn't be happier. He talks to Viv Hardwick about his baton charge.

'THE best £73 I ever spent' has led to award-winning young conductor Richard Farnes becoming music director of Leeds-based Opera North as the company faces the biggest upheaval of its fortunes in 26 years of existence.

Farnes was an emerging talent as a pianist when he approached Opera North about work in the early 1990s and travelled to Leeds for an audition.

"At the time I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music and I had to play and sing along as well so that you can show you can sing in tune or whatever. They said 'you're playing is fine but we don't have any room for extra pianists'. I sort of went back to London having spent 73 quid on this rail ticket - and that's even with a student railcard - thinking 'God that's the biggest waste of money I've ever done'. But it actually turned out to be the best £73 I've ever spent because that was the trigger for Opera North to sponsor me when they heard I'd applied to go to the Opera Studio for a year's training. They piped up with the money and I didn't have to ask them. Between them and the National Opera Studio they supported me and while I was at the Studio they asked me to assist in a revival of Britten's Gloriana."

The young product of King's College has gone from nervously taking the baton for one performance to taking charge of Opera North's entire repertoire ten years later.

Farnes had already agreed to conduct a new production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, which arrives in Newcastle next week as part of a three-opera showcase, but is already working on a new version of Mozart's Don Giovanni touring to the same venue next year.

Next year, from March, Opera North shuts down it's Grand Theatre performance area for redevelopment - which will include building the company's permanent home next door - and will tour until work is completed at the end of 2006. Part of the pressure to find alternative venues has led Opera North to book Gateshead's superb-looking The Sage in June next year for a joint performance of Bluebeard's Castle by Bartok with Ravel's ballet Daphnis and Chloe.

Of the Bartok "semi-staged" concert he says: "It's an extraordinary piece and the only opera Bartok ever wrote with only two characters and we using two fabulous singers John Tomlinson and Sally Burgess."

But Farnes pledged that Opera North performances at The Sage would have no affect on the long relationship his company had built with Newcastle's Theatre Royal on the other side of the Rive Tyne.

"We'll still be touring to the Theatre Royal anyway. In terms of the operas we will stay with the Theatre Royal, there's no question about that because, for us, it's a very important venue and I love going there. It's one of the best audiences we get in terms of enthusiasm. The Sage is an unknown area because it isn't finished yet, but our orchestra is trying to develop a concert programme and we're hoping to become a visiting symphony orchestra to a great new concert hall that everybody is quite excited about," he explains.

Of the current programme touring to Newcastle, Manon Lescaut has created a stir because this is the first new version of the Puccini early work in the past 24 years.

The tale of young beautiful Manon (Russian-born soprano Natalia Dercho) destroyed by her love for student Des Grieux (US tenor Hugh Smith) and the attraction of older Geronte's (bass Brian Bannatyne-Scott) wealth and power was the turning point in Pucinni's career.

Farnes says: "The piece is absolutely stuffed full of beautiful tunes and no less a successful piece and when first performed in 1893 it was better received than La Bohemme was a few years later. It's a very attractive piece and great fun to do with a bit of everything, speed and sparkle and lightness, passion in the second act, tableau in the third and the fourth one huge lament.

"If you think of the man who composed it, Pucinni was an astute man of the theatre and this is the first opera where he came into his own."

Opera North's new man of music says he's delighted to be putting down roots after several years of freelance work which has seen him also work with Royal Opera, English Touring Opera, Scottish Opera, Guildhall School Of Music and Glyndebourne plus conduct some of the country's best chamber, philharmonic and symphony orchestras.

Farnes is also keen to develop Opera North's links with new singers and composers as well as lifting the profile of a company preparing for another 25 years of performance. "When you've been going from company to company for years it's actually quite nice to put all your energy into one basket, particularly with such a friendly company. Even it was possible for me to do lots of other stuff I'd prefer not to because this is a job you can spend 110 per cent of your time doing," he comments.

The line-up for next week is: Tues and Thurs, Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte; Weds and Fri, Manon Lescaut and Sat sees Gluck's Orfeo Ed Eridice.

Next April the two-week residency provides: 12, 16 and 19, Weill's One Touch Of Venue; 13, 15, 21 and 23, Mozart's Don Giovanni and 14, 20 and 22, Rossini's The Thieving Magpie. Box Office: 0870 905 5060

Opera North perform Bluebeard's Castle and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe on June 7, 2005. Box Office: 0870 703 4555

Published: 07/10/2004