Last Updated on February 26, 2026
Opera does not do greatest hits albums, but if they did… Giuseppe Verdi meets Bob Marley in Opera Locos, a show that blends opera’s best-known and loved arias with a sprinkling of pop hits
3.5 out of 5.0 starsLet’s be honest: opera can be a bit of a hard sell. Perhaps not to those who know and love the music, understand the slowly unfolding plotlines, and appreciate the incredible vocal discipline of the singers. But to the average person in the street, opera looks like an arcane and snooty world designed to confuse and exclude, with no relevance to modern life. Songs are often sung in foreign languages; plots take hours (and arias!) to unfurl; and what plotlines there are seem unnecessarily far-fetched. And then there is the language of opera: librettos, scores, mezzo-sopranos, counter-tenors… All of it seems to conspire to make opera an exclusive rather than an inclusive genre. But if you want to see all of the above preconceptions and misconceptions blown out of the water, then The Opera Locos by Spanish theatre company YLLANA provides an inter-generational feel-good solution to opera’s image problem.
YLLANA was founded in 1991 primarily as a comedy and physical theatre company, and this heritage is still very much in evidence in their current production. Over the past 34 years, YLLANA has produced 41 theatrical shows, which have been staged over 16,000 times in over 48 countries, and have drawn in almost 6 million viewers. The Opera Locos (2018) was created and co-directed by Joseph O’Curneen and David Ottone with musical direction by Marc Alvarez and Manuel Coves. Opera Locos aims to introduce and make classical opera more accessible to an audience of non-opera lovers, to those new to opera, and to a generally younger audience in a fresh and original way. While maintaining high standards in terms of singing technique and operatic discipline, the show blends operatic arias with rock and pop classics, all against the backdrop of a steampunk aesthetic and YLLANA’s trademark physical comedy. The London production was meant to have been staged at the Peacock Theatre, but urgent construction there meant that it had to be moved at the last minute to Sadler’s Wells – hats off to the no doubt frantic behind-the-scenes work that went into making the opening night seamless and unruffled.
Set design (by Tatiana De Sarabia, David Ottone, Yeray González) is minimalist. There is a large curtained archway at the back of the stage and 2 bulb-festooned half-tables stage left and right to represent performer dressing rooms, but good use is made of lighting design (by Pedro Pablo Melendo) to set the mood and define spaces on stage. Costume design (by Tatiana de Sarabia) is reminiscent of a very colourful take on a Tim Burton aesthetic. As the curtain rises, we are immediately introduced to the energetic cast of five characters as they arrive on stage to each sing a few lines as part of a medley to showcase their particular vocal range. Alfredo (tenor) played by Jesús Álvarez is a sad, portly figure past his prime, who can no longer make it past the first couple of bars of Nessun Dorma. Wild child Carmen (mezzo-soprano) played by Mayca Teba looks like she escaped from 80s band Strawberry Switchblade and is clearly meant to be a nod to “girl power”. Enrique (baritone) played by Enrique Sánchez-Ramos struts bossily and self-importantly around like a diminutive ringmaster. Franelli (counter-tenor) played by Michaël Koné is quirky, campy and irrepressible. And Maria (soprano) played by María Rey-Joly is dreamy, ditzy and a little bit away with the fairies.
What follows is essentially a comedy jukebox musical, but set to classical opera arias. There is a plot (sort of) in that all the characters are searching for love, but to say there is a narrative arc is probably pushing it. In the pursuit of love, we see the characters in a variety of situations, including giving a vocal lesson, having a shower, or drinking away their sorrows alone in a dressing room. There are moments of physical comedy (one scene involving a gun and one with disembodied hands caressing a singer from behind a curtain) and moments of pathos (let’s just say there is a noose involved…). Everything resolves itself in the end (I won’t reveal how) – but the tenuous plot really isn’t what it’s all about: Opera Locos is simply a celebration of the joy that music of all kinds can bring.
The arias featured in Opera Locos are carefully curated crowd-pleasers that have infiltrated popular culture to the extent that even those with no knowledge of classical opera would recognise at least some of them. Bizet’sToreador Song and Habanera (Carmen); Puccini’s Nessun Dorma (Turandot) and Un Bel dì Vedremo (Madama Butterfly); Verdi’s Sempre Libera ( La Traviata); Mozart’s Queen of the Night Aria and Pa-Pa-Papagena (Die Zauberflöte); Rossini’s Largo al Factotum (Il Barbiere di Siviglia); and Leo Delibes’s Flower Duet (Lakmé), to name a few. The vocalists are all technically very adept – Alvarez’s powerful tenor is particularly appealing, as is Sánchez-Ramos’s deep baritone and great stage presence. But it is Koné’s counter-tenor range that is particularly surprising, especially the first time he hits the higher end of his range as he segues effortlessly from Papagena’s part in The Magic Flute to the opening bars of Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. Rey-Joly’s soprano voice effortlessly hits all the high notes, but sometimes her playing for laughs does make them sound a bit rushed and squeaky rather than silky smooth. All the cast members also do a good job of the fair bit of physical theatre and mime that they have to do alongside their singing. There are a lot of universal gestures and cartoonish sounds that never quite form words but clearly convey intention. It did strike me that this absence of dialogue neatly avoids translation problems and makes Opera Locos easy to perform in its existing form anywhere in the world. Clever.
On the pop side, Opera Locos features snippets from a range of songs including I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston), Grace Kelly (Mika), With or Without You (U2), My Heart Will Go On (Céline Dion), Can You Feel the Love Tonight (Elton John), No Woman, No Cry (Bob Marley) and Take On Me (A-ha). One of the few songs featured (almost) in its entirety is My Way by Frank Sinatra, while the rest feature a few lines at most. A large number feature in a medley near the end of the show that illustrates just how many songs use the same basic chord progressions! My favourite pop-to-opera segue comes with the effortless switch from The Barber of Seville into Mika’s Grace Kelly, which will have you wondering why nobody has done this mash-up before. The other surprising segment (opera purists, close your ears) is a bit of audience participation. For some, this might bring back childhood trauma of being picked on by a panto performer, or sing-alongs at Butlins, but for others, it was group karaoke heaven. Sánchez-Ramos started with a foray into the auditorium armed with a microphone, and then invited the audience to join his “opera masterclass” which involved a series of call-and-response prompts and much laughter. Whether you love or hate the idea, it got everyone to engage with the music, and most of the audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.
Where the show perhaps did not work so well compared to a full opera is that it lacked a strong narrative, consisting as it does of a series of random arias connected only by their relative fame. Removing the music from its context diminishes its emotional impact, and Opera Locos is poorer for it. Characters, too, are cartoonish and more like a panto than an Olivier Award-winning drama. Although the show is clever and a good “gateway drug” to expose new audiences to opera, it ultimately lacks the musical and emotional richness and cohesion that full-length operas have. That said, it is no mean feat to take a relatively impenetrable art form and turn it into accessible, enjoyable entertainment that requires no pre-reading or musical background – and is over in 90 mins. If you have kids, this would be a wonderful way to get them to engage with serious opera music in an environment that seems decidedly unserious and fun.
Opera Locos represents a brave and interesting blurring of the lines between high and popular culture; between serious and not-so-serious music. I am sure that there will be opera snobs who will look down their noses at the production and roll their eyes at the people who enjoyed it. But these pearl-clutching guardians of high culture would do well to remember that when Mozart’s The Magic Flute (now very much in the Serious Music category) was first premiered, it was as a Singspiel, not an opera. And it was performed in a suburban Viennese theatre catering to popular entertainment and spectacle, rather than a grand concert hall. Ultimately, opera is not a rarefied musical creature ringfenced and set apart from popular music: the two are branches of the same family tree. Opera Locos reminds us in a lighthearted way that there is more that links the genres than divides them. It’s 90 minutes of mellifluous escapist fun and brings opera to a whole new audience – and that alone is a reason to celebrate.
Opera Locos is on stage at Sadler’s Wells from 24 to 28 February, and tickets are available here.
Sadler’s Wells Theatre
Rosebery Avenue
London
EC1R 4TN
Box office tel. 020 7863 8000 or e-mail Tickets@sadlerswells.com
For more opera, check out our London Opera Preview Winter/Spring/Summer 2026
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