ENJOY ALL THREE
WITH OUR SUMMER SEASON TICKET!
We’re really excited about our summer season so we’re
offering you the chance to see all three pieces with 1/3 off!
All live performances will comply with government Covid
regulations and masks must be worn until further notice.
FROM SAT 29 MAY 2021
We begin in May with a visit to the darkweb where nothing is as it seems. Crocodile is a collaboration between exciting young opera team, composer Lente Verelst and librettist Lena Vercauteren and Hull-based artist and animator Anna Bean, directed by Russell Plows.
Buy your entry to a Crocodile webcam and we’ll send you a private URL and password. The 12 minute sessions will take place every evening for two weeks. HUO cannot guarantee your safety.
sat 26 June 2021
Like being in charge? The HUO People’s Choice Concert allows you to programme next year’s full-scale production! Artistic Director, Russell Plows and guest conductor Davide Levi, will take you through four great operatic contenders by Martinu, Ullmann and Milhaud and we’ll ask for your vote at the end.
This concert takes place for the first time in the old ticket office of Hull Paragon Station. This friendly space has a super acoustic and is the perfect home for this unusual event.
FRI 16 July 2021
Inspired by the hit US phenomenon, The Moth, HUO presents three stirring and emotional trues stories written, spoken and sung by Poppy Shotts, Joanna Gamble and Alex Grainger covering subjects as diverse as embracing your Hull roots, connecting with estranged family and beating addiction.
In this hour-long cabaret-style event in the Humber Street Gallery Cafe, the performers are accompanied by Ellie Gaynard Evans on violin and the music is by Russell Plows. *Includes encores for voice and violin.
OUR MISSION
Background
Since there is little opera tradition in Hull, audiences are not bound to a notion of repertoire but stand ready to engage with a vital, living and infinitely mutable art-form. This allows us at HUO to tip our focus towards new work built for the city whilst dipping into great works of the past.
The company is run on socialist principles of fairness and equality which inform everything from casting, auditions and pay to repertoire and venues. We welcome approaches from artists from groups which are less well represented in opera and we continue to champion the work of female composers.
Practical promises
We promise the people of Hull, East Yorkshire and beyond, that we at HUO will always be cognisant that we spend public money and that our work will always be accessible in venue, disability access, price, subject matter and types of engagement.
Artistic promises
We promise to be friendly, welcoming and playful in our engagement with audiences and to share with them an exciting journey of discovery and experimentation inspired by our ongoing dialogue.
Our work, whether indoor, outdoor or in workshop form, may entertain, challenge and provoke but is always founded on a passionate belief in communication.
HUO exists to create work which ignites in the people of Hull a passionate relationship with the visceral power of opera.
The Collective
Hull Urban Opera is an expanding collective and currently comprises:
Artistic Director Russell Plows
Outreach Director Charlotte Fong
Adminstrator George Gooden
Music Director Sonia Ben-Santamaria
Designer Joseph Bisat Marshall
Designer Liz Dees
Makeup Venice Marshall
Stage Management Luke Dankoff
Composer Lente Verelst
Librettist Lena Vercauteren
Repetiteur Caroline Blair
Soprano Poppy Shotts
Soprano Kimberley Raw
Mezzo Joanna Gamble
Tenor Alex Grainger
Baritone Edward Robinson
Bass-baritone Neil Balfour