Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
Well, now that we are past Midsummer’s Day, the nights have started drawing in so it is time to look forward to the offerings from Leeds Playhouse to cheer us up and divert us from watching the digits on our smart meters increase quicker than the altimeter on Sir Richard Branson’s spaceship. Fear not, there…
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I have been sitting on this information for a while now because I was getting pretty depressed having to pass on the news of scheduled performances by various organisations being cancelled or postponed over the past eighteen months. Some have been postponed and then cancelled. With the proposed lifting of restrictions and the vaccine roll-out…
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This morning I received a text purporting to be from the NHS inviting me to follow a link to receive my on-line Covid Passport. Whilst it looks totally genuine, after my experience last night I feel a bit wary about taking things at face value. I don’t want to become prey to scammers and end…
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Opera North are at it again, bringing opera to people who would not normally experience it and what a great choice. There can have been no more appropriate work to air on the weekend of the G7 Summit on Climate Change. As the name suggests, there is a green message in this work, not only…
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After Fidelio and La Petite Bohème, Opera North’s third Christmas streaming is the perennial favourite, Cinderella. This is not the big budget blockbuster with an eighty piece orchestra and a Grand Ball scene to rival that of any Hollywood extravaganza of the 1930s, no, this is the Whistle Stop version comprising three actors, a piano…
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La Petite Bohème is a sort of stylised pop video but for a piece of opera. I suppose that could make it an op video. I did indeed remind me of those wonderful pre-war animations which used to be shown on The Old Grey Whistle Test to give some obscure album track a bit of…
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As we all suspected 2020 has ended in tiers! Sadly the status of Leeds has not changed which means that there will be no live performances but we can still enjoy some fine productions which are being streamed on line. Leeds Playhouse A Christmas Carol, this year’s festive offering from Leeds Playhouse, will now be…
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I feel as though Santa Claus has delivered my Christmas present a couple of weeks early. I am sure that you will be thoroughly sick of my moaning about how streaming of opera and other theatrical performances comes nowhere near the live versions, well, this one certainly does! The reason for the success of this…
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I know that I am a little late with this but I have purposely waited so as to make sure that the events I am writing about are certain (or as certain as things can be these days) to take place. I am getting quite disheartened at the amount of emails I am receiving from…
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It might not be opera as we would like to experience it, but nevertheless it was a great way to spend 40 minutes on an otherwise dull Saturday evening in lockdown. Regular readers will know that I have been less than impressed by the on-line versions of operas which have been filmed from the stage…
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