Installation: Five Truths

14 - 25 February (Mon-Sat), 2pm - 8pm
Free, no ticket needed

Part film, part theatre, part art installation: Five Truths comes to the Howard Assembly Room in its first exhibition outside London. Acclaimed director Katie Mitchell presents five interpretations of Shakespeare’s Ophelia in the style of five of the most important directors of the 20th century: Stanislavski, Artaud, Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook.

Be transfixed as each Ophelia tells a different story with the same words from Hamlet. Olivier Award winning actor Michelle Terry is all of these Ophelias, at once quiet and introspective, wild and untamed, detached and distant - each version offers its own truth, while at the same time contradicting and challenging the other versions. Which moves you the most? Which do you recognize? Which Ophelia are you the closest to?

Blending theatre and technology, Mitchell’s films are played simultaneously across ten screens in the Howard Assembly Room on a ten-minute loop.

‘...it’s a visceral, immersive experience’ 
The Guardian

Five Truths has been created for the V&A in association with the National Theatre. With video designer Leo Warner, set designer Vicki Mortimer, lighting designer Paule Constable and sound designer Gareth Fry

Please note that some scenes may not be suitable for younger children.

Who is Ophelia?

(opens Wednesday 1 February)

Look out for this interactive installation around Leeds city centre, specially created to accompany Five Truths. Produced by groundbreaking multi-media artists Invisible Flock, visit www.operanorth.co.uk/whoisophelia to find out more

Giulio Cesare

Erotic entanglements, intrigue, battles and murder: the passionate romance between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra has inspired the imagination of artists across the centuries. Experience all the colour, drama, passion and epic sweep of a Hollywood blockbuster in this timeless new production of Handel’s great masterpiece.

Egypt, ancient times. Cleopatra uses all her considerable wiles to persuade Caesar to join her in an alliance against her brutish brother Ptolemy, with whom she rules the country. Plots and counter-plots ensue before Caesar and Cleopatra emerge finally triumphant in both love and war.

Sung in Italian with English titles
Lasts approximately 3 hours

Film: Hamlet Goes Business

(Aki Kaurismäki, 1987)
PG
86 minutes
Finnish with English subtitles

A special event pairing our Katie Mitchell video installation with Finnish Director Aki Kurasmaki’s retelling of Hamlet. A unique chance to visit the installation after hours will be followed by an informal, film club-style screening of Kurasmaki’s bizarre yet remarkably faithful re-telling of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.

After the death of his father, young Hamlet inherits a seat on the board of a company controlled by his uncle that decides to move into the rubber duck market.

HAMLET GOES BUSINESS is the third in a mini series of four films presented in conjunction with Hyde Park Picture House to accompany the installation FIVE TRUTHS by director Katie Mitchell in the Howard Assembly Room.

Five Truths explores the nature of truth in performance, focussing on Ophelia’s famous madness scene from Hamlet.

8.30pm Five Truths viewing
8.45pm Hamlet Goes Business

The Northern Sinfonia: Young Genius

Mendelssohn and Mozart vie for the title of ‘youthful genius’. Mendelssohn’s astonishing Octet was written when the composer was just 16, and Mozart wrote his Sinfonia Concertante at the ripe old age of 23. Mozart displays remarkable maturity in his writing for the solo violin and viola, and the slow movement of this work contains some of his most emotionally expressive music. The first of Mozart’s extraordinary final three symphonies, completed in just six weeks in the summer of 1788, rounds off a programme of peerless masterpieces from our great friends in the Northern Sinfonia.

Leader/Director: Bradley Creswick
Viola: Michael Gerrard

Music: The Lawson Trio with Yorkshire Young Musicians

In a fresh, upbeat and breathless programme, the Lawson Trio joins forces with the fantastic talents of Yorkshire Young Musicians, the region’s Centre of Advanced Training for exceptionally gifted musicians aged between 8 and 18, to present new and nearly-new music, for a variety of small ensembles.

In the centre of the programme, the Lawson Trio, fast becoming recognised as one of the UK’s finest young chamber ensembles, perform two works by award-winning composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad, including the Olympic Games inspired Five Rackets for Trio Relay. The second half of the concert showcases the remarkable musical talent of Yorkshire Young Musicians, that is being nurtured under our very noses.

‘Engagingly freewheeling’ The Guardian on Cheryl Frances-Hoad

‘A remarkable talent’ The Times on Cheryl Frances-Hoad

The Orchestra of Opera North: Beethoven and Dvořák

Our Beethoven Symphony and Concerto cycle continues with the welcome return of Maestro Bamert to conduct the sunny Symphony No. 2 in D alongside the most popular of his Romances for violin and orchestra. Complementing these masterworks is Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, the most popular of its kind composed in the Romantic era.

Conductor: Mathias Bamert
Cello: Alban Gerhardt
Violin: David Greed