First came the thrilling success of Phyllida Lloyd’s staging of Peter Grimes in 2006, which sold out nationwide. Then came an intelligent but bankable production of Madam Butterfly, followed by the resuscitation of a near-unknown Baroque comedy, Reinhard Keiser’s The Fortunes of King Croesus. At Christmas, Opera North broke into the family market by gambling on the world premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Pinocchio. And it paid off handsomely.

That’s a track record that makes the activities of Britain’s other regional outfits look sluggish by comparison. Welsh National Opera, whose touring schedules have been consistently pruned back in recent seasons, can only muster two new productions in the entire year; Scottish Opera, though on the mend from its enforced break some three years ago, is still carefully husbanding its limited resources. But Opera North’s spring season shows no signs of coasting: three operas, and three more new productions.

Some wizardry is involved in a strike rate of three out of three. Each of the Shakespearean-themed works set to tour Britain (Verdi’s Macbeth opens on April 23, followed by Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) will be based on the same essential set design, allowing some strategic cutting of costs while being able to host the work of three very different directors.

“We’ve had some good and penetrating experience in mounting productions this way, and it gives us very good artistic value,” says the company’s general director, Richard Mantle. “And it’s a much more interesting prospect for audiences – it raises the level of buzz and realises expectations to a degree that we wouldn’t be able to afford if we’d done productions in the traditional way. Besides, you don’t need ten tonnes of scenery to tell a story – we proved that with Peter Grimes.”

If that sounds like a slightly tepid sell, then chalk it up to Mantle’s penchant for sober-minded judgment – a trait shared by the company’s musical director, Richard Farnes. Both feel strongly that what sets the company apart is its sense of ensemble . “There’s a collective creative spirit here that is absolutely fantastic,” Farnes says, “a sense of ownership of the company.” For Lloyd’s production, that meant collaboration between conductor and director as well as the multishaded characterisation that you get from a true ensemble cast. According to Mantle: “We felt we could cast virtually all of the singers [for Grimes] out of a regular core of people who work with us.”

The Shakespeare operas will follow a similar path: big, familiar names largely make way for newcomers, who will double up throughout the season. “We’ve never gone down the starring route,” Mantle admits, “and I don’t think we necessarily believe that that is the way you present opera these days.” Not booking up the Alist years in advance also allowed them to bring back the Grimescast at such short notice. “Opera North has always had a fleeter view about life. We don’t want to be h i d e b o u n d by ten-year commitments to artists,” Mantle says.

Nor should anyone be expecting the predictable in the three stagings opening in a fortnight. “I don’t think there’s a doublet and hose in sight,” Mantle says unapologetically. Indeed, with the directors Tim Albery, John Fulljames and Martin Duncan lined up for Macbeth, Roméo et Juliette and A Midsummer Night’s Dream respectively, few would expect the lavishly traditional. “Cloaking the reality of an opera in some sort of historic period costume doesn’t always do opera justice,” Mantle says. “Some composers would be horrified that we are still performing as though to a 19th-century audience.” Naturally, he won’t take any flak for the misfiring modernist productions, such as Christopher Alden’s Orfeo, described last year in these pages as “a joyless farrago”. “A more thoughtful piece of work than a number of critics gave it credit for,” he says mildly.

The priorities for Opera North are now all about gentle expansion. Unlike WNO, with its purpose-built Millennium Centre in Cardiff, the company still has to contend with the spatial limitations of its base at the Grand in Leeds – as well as the medium-sized theatres to which it tours. A series of renovations have ramped up the Grand’s back-stage facilities, slightly expanded the pit and improved the acoustics, but the company is still reticent about revving up the big guns of Wagner in the space: a Ring production, for example, looks unlikely. “We have seen too many examples of the Ring bankrupting organisations,” Mantle says.

Farnes’s current preoccupation is fleshing out the warmth of the orchestra – an extra double bass should help – to bolster a richer sound for Verdi and Puccini, and bringing it out of the theatre for bigger works performed in concert.

Neither man is short of ambition. Following the success of Dove’s Pinocchio, next season David Sawer’s new operetta will be unveiled, a topical satire about plastic surgery with a libretto by the comedian and writer Armando Iannucci. Arisk? “A lot of our audiences trust us on unusual repertoire,” Farnes says, “and because they’ll try new things, the repertoire is much wider than it would otherwise be. We need to be the same with contemporary repertoire.”

Opera North’s spring season opens with Macbeth at the Grand, Leeds (0870 1214901), on April 23, then touring (www.operanorth.co.uk)

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