Opera is returning to Sunderland. DICK GODFREY talked to the woman behind the revival

IT was in the interval of her production of Aida two years ago that Ellen Kent – purveyor of opera to the masses – told me that it was all over.

Even as the Chisinau Opera from post-Soviet Moldova prepared to re-take to the Sunderland Empire stage, Ellen, as producer/promoter, explained she had decided to stop touring and concentrate her energy on one-off arena spectaculars.

At a stroke, many theatre-goers in the provinces were to lose just about the only opera to come their way. But that was then. This is now. So what has happened in the time between the poles of the cliche?

Ellen Kent chuckles. “Just goes to show you shouldn’t make statements like that,” she says. “I announced to the whole world that I was going to wrap it up and just do a little opera here and a bit of ballet there.”

This new shape of things to come did not last very long. News of her “retirement” was carried in the pages of showbiz paper The Stage. The day after, Ellen had a call from renowned concert impresario Derek Block.

They knew each other from old. “I've admired him since he brought the Bolshoi Ballet to the Royal Albert Hall in 1992.” The admiration appears to have been mutual. Block recognised that Ellen Kent’s retirement from touring after a quarter of a century had left a gap. And, he decided, only Ellen Kent could fill it.

She might have retired from producing and promoting with her own company, but would she do the same for, him, “If I bankroll you and promote you?” recalls Ellen: “He asked me if I’d go abroad and direct and put the whole shebang together. I considered it and then said OK.”

So it is that next month will see Ellen Kent productions of La Traviata (March 2) and Madame Butterfly (March 3) at Sunderland Empire performed by Kharkiv Opera from Ukraine under the aegis of Derek Block and Blackburn International.

I wondered if there were any financial implications arising from Ellen’s heavy involvement with Chisinau Opera and Ballet which had led to the decision to wrap up her own company?

She denies being over-stretched. “I’d worked with them for 15 years and I thought a change was as good as a rest. And I had other companies I was considering working with.”

The same year she announced her change of direction, she had brought over the Kharkiv Ballet Company from Ukraine for a tour including a week in Newcastle Theatre Royal.