In the Press 

"A real thrill... beautifully staged with some breathtaking moments."

★★★★ London Unattached

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"Sophie Gilpin’s direction ensured clarity and dramatic impact across all the various scenes, in the process ensuring there was space for each artist to flourish."

★★★★  Music OMH​

"It is a mark of the power of Opera North's production that there was an audible gasp from the audience when Orfeo turns around to behold his wife. This is story-telling stripped to its essentials, the concentrated emotion even more potent... there is so much that is dramatic in this production that it's easy to forget that it isn't fully staged."

★★★★  ReviewsGate

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"When is a concert performance of an opera not a concert performance? The line is hard to draw with a company as resourceful as Opera North... With a top-class cast and their remarkable chorus, the company has put on what for many others would have been a respectable theatre production."

★★★★ Theatre Reviews North

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"A highly-dramatic and first-class performance... filled to the brim with passion, Opera North's Orfeo ed Euridice was emotional, captivating and like every good opera should be - hauntingly beautiful."

★★★★★ Fairy Powered Productions

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"Though billed as a 'concert performance', this was really much more than that... I've seen poorer production values in other places that claimed a director, a designer and production staff. In this case the only published credit, apart from those to the musicians , language coach and stage management, is to Sophie Gilpin for 'concert placing'. but someone's been working hard."

The Arts Desk

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"Although Orfeo ed Euridice is described by Opera North as a 'concert performance' this is really a semi-staging, and a most effective one too... Acknowledgement is due to Sophie Silpin who did a first-class job directing the limited stage and costume arrangements."

Seen and Heard International

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"There is a star-lit back-cloth, a platform in the centre of the stage that acts as a tomb, and dramatic theatre lighting. The singers, including a large chorus, are all in character; so rather than a concert it feels like the cast has fallen down a great hole into the centre of the earth. For Gluck's late 18th century reforming opera, where the hero walks through hell and back, the staging works perfectly and only adds to the intensity of the emotion in the piece"

Quays Life

"Opera galas rarely merit reviews: all those artists and works can read as dull inventory if you weren't there. the inaugural concert of SWAP'ra, involving some 150 singers, conductors, directors, stage managers and orchestral players - all women; picture it - was a different matter, and formidably stylish too."​​

★★★★ The Observer

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"it was a celebration of the important role that women play in opera, and a testament to the support which SWAPra has garnered since its founding, nine months ago... but it was the music that held the attention." ​

★★★★ Planet Hugill

"[This production] powerfully ignites one of the greatest love stories of the past age." 

British Theatre Guide

“A fast-moving and entertaining show”

★★★★.5 London Unattached

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"Telemann’s comic opera hits the mark thanks to two fine, well-directed young singers… Gilpin has her own ideas on this unequal battle of the sexes… She humanises the trope of the shrew dominating the rich fool… another well-timed triumph"

★★★★ The Arts Desk

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"Telemann’s comic opera gets a 1960s twist in a smart and stylish staging that finds surprising resonance in a frothy farce at the Linbury Theatre... Director Sophie Gilpin and her creative team, Anna Yates (designs) and Ryan Day (lighting), have cleverly reimagined this 300 year old intermezzo as a standalone evening, giving it a makeover that’s both fun and just pointed enough to raise an eyebrow or two. The result is a brisk, compact production that charms, provokes and never outstays its welcome... We’re in 1960s London – a bold but effective choice that gives the action a retro flair and underlines the opera’s gender politics with a sly wink... It’s a touch that sums up the production’s approach: heightened, irreverent and more than a little camp – but anchored by a sense of purpose beneath the sparkle.. What’s most impressive is how it manages to tease out something genuinely resonant from a libretto that could so easily feel dated. There’s a sting in the tale here – not so much a cautionary ending as a raised eyebrow at the costs of underestimating the women in your life."

★★★★ Music OMH

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“Ssophie Gilpin [brings] a modern slant to issues of equality and female emancipation. It works well... [her approach] allows Telemann’s neatly revived confection to shine.”

★★★★ The Guardian

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"It’s the aftermath of a Christmas party. The modular brown vinyl furniture catapults us back to the 60s, Women’s Lib, the pill and all that. Wisely, director, Sophie Gilpin and designer, Anna Yates, refrain from loading up the period detail too much... we get a complex and comic story working as pure entertainment, alongside a critique of male controlling behaviour that provides a bit of a guide as to how to resist it."

★★★★ Broadway World​

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"Wmbition and freshness combine to give new life to something old"

★★★★ Plays to See

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"Sophie Gilpin’s staging of Telemann’s comedy is funny and thought-provoking... [she] stresses in a programme note that, although essentially a light, even knockabout comedy, the work deals in serious issues of gender, class and patriarchal structures in the 18th century, the 1960s and even now; on stage, she judges the balance skilfully... an entertaining as well as a thought-provoking 80 minutes.”

★★★ The Stage

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“Gilpin’s production deepens, with logic and a sense of a pathos, Vespetta’s fight for personal and social freedom as a woman, by setting each of the work’s three acts against a party in which she is denied full or any involvement”

Opera Today

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“It gets the full three-course treatment from director Sophie Gilpin and her fellow Jette Parker Young Artists, who pull off a coup with this deliciously observed social comedy... emancipation and the battle of the sexes bursts into the decorous framework with rebellious 1960s energy... Gilpin and her cast create a sincerity of emotion that carries the action through its contrived situations with easy flow, and 90 minutes whips past.”

Critics Circle

"Ingenious stagecraft... in an appropriately verdant outdoor setting, director Sophie Gilpin achieves the requisite emotional balancing act. Both artificial and sincere, ironic yet charming, her production makes a vivid impact"​

★★★★ The Stage

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"Sophie Gilpin's production which, in its canny fusion of artifice and sincerity, sophistication and simplicity, traced the opera's arc from pastoral romp to death and transformation."​

Opera Magazine

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"A bijou delight of bubbly baroque"

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"Sophie Gilpin and the VBF company have created a work true to the character of Handel's "little opera": he would certainly have approved. Ovid definitely would."

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"It is the chorus that importantly sets the mood...they attend on Galatea and Acis, bringing a bath which they fill with coloured bath-foam from florists' pails. This is an inspired touch of tender humour."

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"Polyphemus is arrogant and vain. In one of many finely detailed references, director, Sophie Gilpin, has him preening himself before a mirror imagining himself the hero, but an image of Acis looks back."

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"It would be easy to over-egg the murder scene... but Gilpin and Stanfield turn the horror in to a ballet in slow motion... the moment is palpably touching. The transformation scene is beautifully rendered"​

Mark Aspen

"Sophie Gilpin's production... heightens the sense of youthful recklessness that is a driving force in the opera"​

★★★★ The Stage

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"Gilpin excels at drawing out the actor within the singer and her composed yet positive direction accentuates the emotions of the characters"​

★★★★ Spy in the Stalls

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"wholeheartedly compelling"​

★★★★ TrendFem

"This is La bohème as you expect (and hope) it will be.|

★★★★★ Fringe Opera

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"Exceptional"

★★★★ Everyman Theatre

"It was just fabulous. I felt it was incredibly professional, fun and a wonderful way to start the festive season with my 2 daughters who are 6 and 9. We all absolutely loved it." 

Audience member

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"Loved the interaction with the children. Felt the performance was excellent and made opera available to all (even though I don't usually listen to opera)" 

Audience member

"The small and thriving Northern Opera Group triumphed with a rarity... Directed by Sophie Gilpin, the production caught the wit of the piece, with a much-needed sprinkling of magic"​

★★★★★ The Observer

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"A charming and accessible piece, which tells the story with wit and style... an ideal seasonal offering"​

★★★★ Opera Today

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"a creative and innovative use of visual and still images"​​

★★★★ Fairy Powered Productions

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"Sophie Gilpin's production really gets to the heart of this unique take on the classic fairytale... [she] has directed this production with great style, really making the most of the locations in Leeds"​​

London Love London Culture

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"Gilpin makes excellent use of the setting, grounding proceedings in reality from the start... a capable cast is supported by an ingeniously screened community chorus; the images of not always appropriate feet for the shoe-fitting scene are wittily presented."​

The Reviews Hub

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"Beautiful and recognisable sets, a loveable cast, plenty of humour, and some particularly great editing make this show as charming as the prince himself"​

Living North

"The opera is a heady rush of action: the three hours sprint by as the audience takes in weddings, seductions, betrayals, heartbroken laments and gorgeous singing"​

★★★★★ Spy in the Stalls

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"Sophie Gilpin... manages to bring out the intimate setting of the story while offering a more damning portrait of the leading man than often seen."​

★★★★ Reviews Hub

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"HeadFirst Productions have done an excellent job of bringing this 18th century work right up to date" ​

The F-Word

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"entirely stimulating"​

Planet Hugill