The director and producer will bring three productions to Liverpool’s Empire Theatre in February
19:34, 28 Jan 2026
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Ellen Kent (Image: Indira Flack )
“People always cried in my operas,” says Ellen Kent. The award-winning producer has a career spanning more than 33 years. In 1992, she “fell into opera by accident” after being asked by Rochester City Council to put on a show for thousands of people at Rochester Castle. She worried that the children’s theatre shows she was working on wouldn’t attract the thousands that the council were after so said, “what about opera?”
The 76-year-old had never produced an opera show, but her opera debut with Verdi’s Nabucco was a catalyst for what would become an incredible career.
She was the first producer to put out a major tour of foreign opera on the British theatre circuit, dominated the ballet market in the UK for many years and has a long-list of awards and commendations for her inspiring career.
Fast-forward to 2026 and Ellen Kent is embarking on her farewell tour. The producer and director will present stunning classical productions of Verdi’s La Traviata, Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in venues across the UK, including Liverpool’s Empire Theatre.
Her shows have become renowned for being accessible to people who wouldn’t usually watch opera performances. She told the ECHO: “I’m not doing anything different to what I’ve always done to make my shows accessible. I do popular opera. I do traditional opera, beautiful sets, storyline as it should be told, nothing funny. I don’t do Butterfly in Viet Cong outfits, for instance. Some people do.
Ellen Kent and Opera International’s Ukranian Opera and Ballet Theatre Kyiv production of Bizet’s Carmen(Image: ugc)
“What’s the point when Puccini wrote this beautiful music and this wonderful Butterfly? I can tell you we do Butterfly every year. Do you know why? Because it absolutely sells out every single year. And it’s sold out again.”
Like Ellen’s past UK and Ireland opera tours, she has personally hand-picked and directed all three operas to create visually beautiful and moving productions.
Ellen said: “It’s very beautiful but the most important thing is the acting, which I would call very ‘Stanislavski’, a Russian expression meaning opera from the heart, not any modern version, but opera which is traditional opera with a spirit.
“We do acting which is very natural so it’s very believable, so people get fooled into the story by it. And that’s what I specialise in, beautiful sets, costumes, traditional opera.
“They’re believable performances, rather like Shakespeare really, not only this modern stuff, because I think most of the audience, they want to look at beautiful stuff, classic stories, well acted, well told, with lovely sets and costumes. We sing it in the original language, and so on. So that’s what I do. And it’s obviously been very popular.”
Ellen Kent’s production of Madama Butterfly(Image: ATG)
Coming back to Liverpool is special for Ellen, as it was where her dad was born before WWI. While many might spend their summer in warmer climates, Ellen would visit her uncle Len in Crosby.
But it is her upbringing in India and Spain, where her family lived during her childhood, where Ellen found her love for the arts. Her mum, who “was the artistic one” in her family, would put on amateur shows. She has fond memories of acting in her mum’s productions.
She told the ECHO: “My mother used to put on [shows], she did Butterfly once, I remember she used to put that on and I was always the child. My mother was a great one for reality, putting on operas that people would believe in, would identify with, would raise their emotions to the highest level you could.
“People always cried in my operas, once in Butterfly, there were lots of people sniffing in the audience and so on. And that’s what I want. If people aren’t crying, I’d say, my God, I haven’t done this properly.”
Ellen Kent: The Farewell Tour runs at Liverpool’s Empire Theatre from February 16 to 18.
More information on the upcoming shows can be found on the ATG website.