Writer/Director: Jonathan Ainscough
Conductor: Jack Ridley
Opera North ticks all the boxes in this full-house children’s matinee at the Grand Theatre, a show repeated in single performances at all the theatres the opera company is touring to. All audience members (including your reviewer who, to his shame, didn’t fill it in) are equipped with a “very very important detective’s notebook”, with lots of spaces for such things as characters and clues. During the show constant reference is made to this and, judging from the audience response when asked to remember clues, most of the youngsters were a great deal more conscientious!
Then there is a story as involving as it is silly. Despina works at the police station as a cleaner, but wants to be a detective, so, when things start to go missing, starting with the circus tent from The Bartered Bride, she enlists the aid of the audience in trying to solve the mystery. Her investigations bring in plenty of opera characters as complainants or as specialist witnesses, starting with Preziosilla from La Forza del Destino to look into the future and memorably including Cavaradossi to paint the suspect’s image!
There are little extracts involving each of the characters, all semi-relevant to the “investigation”, which creditably involve a few totally unexpected examples. alongside regular favourites. With coaching the audience can have great fun joining in the Sergeant of Police’s Song from The Pirates of Penzance and Despina’s reworked aria from Cosi fan Tutte, but what about the Queen of Hearts from Will Todd’s Alice in Wonderland or the Lighthouse Keeper from Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers? A highlight comes when Queen Elizabeth I and the Queen of Hearts engage in a “Who’s the best queen?” competition to the music of Donizetti!
Nor is propagandising the value of opera neglected. Despina carefully tells the audience (and it’s there in the notebook) the name of each opera and its composer and at the end there is a short speech about the constantly changing world of opera.
With the exception of Julia Mariko the four singers all take various parts in Bek Palmer’s splendid costume designs: the set, incidentally, with its liftable panel revealing all sorts of designs, is also pretty nifty. Mariko is Despina who sings attractively, clowns cheerfully and, most important, keeps the children on side. Lauren Young has a series of flamboyant women to play and does so with authority and no little sense of fun. Among various parts Frazer Scott’s Police Chief is a comic mix of American accent and Savoy Opera manoeuvres and Trystan Llyr Griffiths moves from the exaggerations of the Ringmaster from The Bartered Bride to the romantic drama of Cavaradossi.
Jack Ridley supplies little tags to introduce characters as well as accompanying the singers and Jonathan Ainscough pitches this at an approachable level. He would have been well pleased to hear the eight-year-old on the way out claiming excitedly that he’d recognised the thief by following the clues!
Reviewed on 25 October 2025.
