The folk fiddler Joe Townsend claims that his violin has never sounded better since he lent it to an old Transylvanian Gypsy. The Gypsy played for while, and when he handed it back Townsend discovered that "the instrument felt warm, with something of its own will, as if his music and his story had been transferred to me".

The art of violin-making and playing has always been equal parts woodwork, toil and hocus-pocus; and it is this mystic element that this curious show – part-musical documentary, part pub session, devised by Townsend with Opera North – focuses on. The action is set in a luthier's workshop, and follows the progress of an instrument from a hunk of wood to a delicately carved box of air; involving maiden's tears, diabolical trysts and a bucket of sheep's guts along the way.

Alasdair Middleton's script makes much reference to the animistic aspects of the violin: an instrument with a neck, body, spine, ribs and a little plug of dowel beneath the bridge that the French refer to as "l'ame" – or the soul. It incorporates tales of women being turned into violins, violins being turned into women, and the Cremonese masters giving angelic names to their creations to prevent the Devil from corrupting them. What it doesn't give you is very much specific information about the history, science or construction of the instrument, other than revealing that less than half of the 60ft of intestine coiled within the average sheep is supple enough to create strings.

Townsend's music, however, is an authoritative compendium of European folk styles played with thrilling virtuosity. Whatever that Transylvanian Gypsy breathed into the instrument, it's potent stuff.