A Handel / Weill double bill

Please note that due to restrictions in England, performances of the Handel/ Weill double-bill will be rescheduled to early 2021. Existing bookers will be contacted by the Leeds Playhouse Box Office to transfer their bookings or to arrange refunds.

One performance of The Seven Deadly Sins will also be livestreamed at 6pm on Saturday 21 November. All existing bookers will also be contacted with the opportunity to arrange free access to the livestream.

Find out more and book tickets for The Seven Deadly Sins ONDemand livestream.

Simple country life collides with the sins of the city in this Handel / Weill double bill.

The evening opens with a contemporary take on Handel’s Acis & Galatea, a light-hearted pastoral opera inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The nymph Galatea and the shepherd Acis are falling in love but when the monstrously jealous Polyphemus appears on the scene, their happiness is threatened… Anthony Kraus leads a 15-strong orchestra through a beautiful score that swings from the joyous to the melancholic, from the hearty ‘Happy We’ to the poignant chorus ‘Mourn, All Ye Muses!’ Featuring Nicholas Watts (The Turn of the Screw) as Acis and Amy Freston (The Merry Widow) as Galatea.

In Weill’s jazzy Seven Deadly Sins, we meet Anna and Anna: one person, two personalities. Sent away for seven years to make money for their struggling family, they journey between seven cities from Philadelphia to San Francisco, and encounter sloth, pride, wrath, gluttony, lust, greed and envy on the way. As they do, they dance, sing, argue and bear the sardonic commentary of their family. Weill’s playful and shimmering ‘sung ballet’ – his final collaboration with Brecht – is directed and choreographed by Gary Clarke (Street Scene) and features Wallis Giunta (Trouble in Tahiti) and dancer Shelley Eva Haden as the two Annas.