Ellen Kent's 'Farewell' Tour
- Robert Beale
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
La Traviata by Piave and Verdi; Carmen by Meilhac, Halevy and Bizet
Senbla and Opera International
Opera House, Manchester
March 24-26, 2026: La Traviata 2 hrs 25 mins; Carmen 2 hrs 50 mins; Madama Butterfly tonight.
Remaining dates: Carmen: Sunderland Empire April 1; Sheffield City Hall April 4; York Grand Opera House May 4. Madama Butterfly: Blackpool Grand Theatre March 29; York Grand Opera House May 3 (and other venues)
So, it has come to this. After almost 30 years of bringing opera and ballet by eastern European performers to the UK - with extensive tours of provincial theatres - impresario and director Ellen Kent has declared her “Farewell” tour.
There have been some great adventures along the way. From being chased by Romanian crime bosses and smuggled out by the British Council, to setting herself up as an oil importer to keep things on the road in the last energy crisis, via negotiations with changing political regimes in Latvia and Moldova, and more recently offering a badly needed opportunity to Ukrainian opera singers and musicians, she has never sought the quiet life.
Her productions have been unashamedly populist, defying showbiz superstition by working with children and animals if at all possible, and telling the stories of the standard operas in simple, traditional terms. And the audiences come; not in the numbers they once did, as she’s mined this vein well over the years, but they do come.
The offerings at the Manchester Opera House this week are the same as two years ago: La Traviata, Carmen and Madama Butterfly. Several principals are those we have heard before, but the new voices are among the best: Viktoriia Melnyk in particular, who sang Violetta in La Traviata with accurate intonation and untiring enthusiasm, even when supposed to be close to expiring from consumption (she was also Micaela in Carmen), and Armenian National Opera principal Mariia Davydova, whose Carmen title role was sung and danced with unremitting panache.
The tenor soloist in both was Hovhannes Andreasyan, from the Armenian National Opera, who has an attractive tone and sounds good when at full throttle (a bit less in tune when going for tenderness as Alfredo in La Traviata, but expressing the desperation of Don Jose in Carmen very well). Iurie Gisca has been singing Giorgio Germont, the meddling father, and Escamillo, the toreador, for as long as I can remember, and has acquired a gravitas that suits the former role while still managing some swagger for the latter.
There is a 16-strong chorus, some members of which take the lesser roles, and they do their best with the choreography they’re given while making a fine ensemble sound. Vasyl Vasylenko conducts as usual, taking the fast tempi a bit too fast, but giving the principals latitude in their big moments.
Cost-cutting is obvious this time around: La Traviata has no real set, but a painted backcloth that denotes nowhere in particular; Carmen has some rather better painted backgrounds and a few rather battered flats. Madama Butterfly is still to come, but has been effective in the past.
I think Ellen would be wise to call it quits now (though there are suggestions of a “comeback” in a couple of years): whether anyone else can make an enterprise such as hers work again is an open question. It’s been dependent on economic factors as much as anything: when times are hard in their native lands performers will take what’s on offer here, and exchange rates sometimes work in their favour. It’s also been the result of immense determination and a sense of what the public wants – which isn’t always what the high panjandrums of the arts world think it should.
Somehow I can’t imagine English National Opera stepping into the very big gap that will be left when Ellen finally bids farewell.
More info and tickets here
