Richard Farnes led Opera North in a pulsating SalomÈ, and Villazon cut a dash in his debut as Werther.
By Hugh Canning [Times Online, 22 January 2006]
As the Grand Theatre in Leeds undergoes renovation, Opera North is spending the first half of its 2005-06 season giving concert performances and semi-stagings. The programme actually started at the end of last season, when Richard Farnes, the companyís dynamic young music director, conducted thrilling ìstagedî concerts of Bartokís Bluebeardís Castle ó with John Tomlinson as the eponymous world- and wife-weary Duke and Sally Burgess as his nosey spouse number four ó before taking it into the studio for Chandosís Opera-in-English series.