Front Row

Alan Garner’s 10th novel, Treacle Walker, may be one of the shortest books to make the Booker Prize shortlist but once read the slim volume which explores the nature of time weighs on the reader’s mind. Alan talks to Nick Ahad about the creation of Treacle Walker and what’s it like to be the oldest author ever to be nominated for the UK’s most celebrated literary prize.Monteverdi’s opera, Orfeo, is regarded as the first great opera and while there have been numerous productions since its premiere in 1607 none of those have attempted the approach being taken by Opera North this week. Monteverdi’s opera is being recreated through a collaboration between Indian and Western classical music traditions. The co-music directors - composer and sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun and conductor and harpsichordist Laurence Cummings - along with the opera’s director, Anna Himali Howard, join Nick to discuss why Monteverdi’s opera provides the perfect gateway to a new form of music storytelling.When Baz Luhrmann was a young thea