A BRONTE museum worker is arranging a rare performance of a little-known opera version of Wuthering Heights.

Charissa Hutchins will stage a large extract from the epic adaptation of Emily Bronte’s famous novel in Haworth this spring.

She and her team of young professional opera singers are focusing on the final act of Bernard Herrmann’s 1951 work. They will portray the dramatic return of Heathcliff to the Haworth moors where he discovers Cathy, the love of his life, has married Edgar Linton.

The performance, on April 18, will be only yards from the Bronte Parsonage Museum. Proceeds will be split between Manorlands and the museum’s acquisitions fund.

Charissa is a museum assistant at the parsonage and believes it will be the first time such a large amount of Herrmann’s opera has been performed in the UK.

Herrmann, born in 1911, was an American composer best-known for writing music for Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles movies, Psycho, North By Northwest and Citizen Kane.

Charissa wanted to organise a charity opera evening in Haworth, and while looking for material discovered the score of Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights in the Bronte Parsonage Museum library.

She said: “I read the whole of it and thought ‘this is amazing’. I got hold of the soundtrack and I was inspired to do a huge chunk. It’s only been performed in America and Germany. Herrmann was a huge Bronte fan and wrote music for Orson Welles’s film of Jane Eyre in 1946. He visited Haworth.”

Charrissa, a soprano, will be joined on stage by opera singers Sally Mitchell, Leon Waksberg and Phil Wilcox, plus local rock singer Yvonne Gillson. With Yorkshire pianist Gordon Balmforth, the group will perform light opera classics before the final act of Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights.

“It’s the most dramatic part of the opera and will make the most sense to an audience. Cathy has married Edgar, and Heathcliff walks into a scene of domestic tranquillity and causes uproar.”

Everyone is giving services for free. “Fifty per cent of proceeds will go to the museum in memory of Bernard.”

Wuthering Heights is at the Old School Rooms, Haworth, on April 18, at 7.30pm. E-mail charrissa_bronte@outlook.com to book tickets.