A field of butterflies on the Pennine moors, ethereal poetry and fascinating music in your ears as you explore the wild landscape above Haworth in West Yorkshire.
What’s this got to do with opera?
This is Earth & Sky, Opera North’s immersive soundwalk, created for the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture as part of the Wild Uplands programme and supported by the Delius Trust.
It’s difficult to categorise: most reviews can neatly describe a CD, a book or a concert, but this is something different. And to really experience Earth & Sky, you have to make an effort.
First, you’ll need walking boots and outdoor gear, ready for whatever the moors throw at you. Then download the Earth & Sky app onto your smartphone, connect headphones, and press ‘Start walk’.
Off you go on a 2.6 mile (1.5 hour) exploration of the bleak and beautiful countryside made famous by the Brontës. Through the mystery of GPS, every step you take triggers a soundscape of music, field recordings and poetry.
The Orchestra of Opera North perform work by Bradford-born composer Frederick Delius alongside new commissions from three contemporary women composers, with the Chorus of Opera North’s voices threaded through. You’ll also hear both real and otherworldly sounds created by a sound artist, and the words of a local poet.
Composers from Italy, Kenya and Wales have drawn inspiration from the natural and industrial heritage of the moors, including rock strata and quarrying.
Manchester-based sonic artist Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos captures natural sounds from Penistone Hill — dawn birdsong, curlews, rustling grasses, fluttering wings — and weaves them into the music. She has also augmented two Delius works so the whole soundscape flows seamlessly.
Welsh composer Gwen Siôn’s Quiet Earth combines electronic and acoustic instrumentation with distorted environmental and vocal recordings, interlaced with fragments from moorland texts.
Along the route you’ll also encounter striking sculptures: a monumental archway that from a distance looks hewn from rock but is made from the raw fleece of local sheep, and a hidden valley filled with 99 butterflies intricately carved from stone. The latter, inspired by a Palestinian poet, reflects on the fate of those displaced by conflict.
Technically, Earth & Sky is a masterpiece in its use of technology, but it goes much deeper. It’s a moving exploration of identity and the human experience. Highly recommended — but you’ll need to get your boots on soon, as it ends on 12 October.