Welsh National Opera
Mid Wales Opera Dido and Aenaes OpenStages production
n the luminous stone sanctuary of 11th-century Brecon Cathedral, listening to one of opera’s earliest masterpieces, it was hard not to reflect on how unforgiving the 21st century has been to the art form. Yet Mid Wales Opera’s OpenStages production of Dido and Aeneas offered something increasingly rare in our cultural life: not merely reassurance,…
A Tosca that delights as glorious entertainment
Tosca, Welsh National Opera Tosca with a reduced orchestra and bought in 2018 production from Opera North may not sound like the height of excitement for Welsh National Opera’s autumn season. Yet, the Saturday afternoon performance at Wales Millennium Centre was a glorious entertainment that had the usually more restrained opera audiences literally cheering at…
WNO Successfully Stages the Unstageable Candide
Wales Millennium Centre Leonard Bernstein’s Candide premiered on Broadway in 1956 where its short-run was met with puzzlement and poor reviews. While Candide has found more favourable reactions in recent decades, it remains a problematic work. What exactly is it? An opera? A musical? Welsh National Opera opts to call it an operetta – which…
Opera brothers Jack and Sam Furness
It’s a scenario many older siblings might dread; after years of being big brother, finding yourself on the receiving end of being told what to do — by your younger brother. But this isn’t a story about childhood rivalries – it is far, far more dramatic. This is opera. Well, it is really life and…
Marriage of Figaro, Welsh National Opera
The beautiful thing about The Marriage of Figaro is that, a couple centuries after it was written, it still holds up. Indeed – and differently from many other opera comedies, whose hijinks can feel forced and outdated to a contemporary audience – it can easily read as commentary on a number of topics our modern sensitivities are…
Opera Favourites At The Movies, Welsh National Opera
Opera Favourites At The Movies, WNO It is time for a concert showcase at the WNO – an excellent opportunity to leave to the side any concerns with how to visually narrate a storyline or express the deeper themes of a work through staging, and simply entertain the audience with a pure display of technical…
Peace and Passion, Welsh National Opera, Wales Millennium Centre
★★★ It could not have been more apt for this concert that Mozart was struggling to make ends meet and even hold onto life when composing the Requiem. Our sources tell us he was notorious for a lifestyle of expenditure that income could never keep up with. The work had to be finished by others…
Opera Favourites, Welsh National Opera
** While Welsh National Opera’s spring concert imaginatively called Opera Favourites did what it said on the tin, it was also partly a musical preview of some scheduled shows. There was, for example, a fair chunk of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, February 2025, and a rousing chorus and orchestral section from Britten’s Peter Grimes,…
Così Fan Tutte, Welsh National Opera
Wales Millennium Centre *** There are some works which are harder to look at under a modern lens than others, and Così Fan Tutte is certainly one of that number. To bring to a stage, in 2024, a work that is literally titled ‘they’re all the same’ is inevitably to contend with its glaring sexism,…
Welsh National Opera says Arts Council allocation 10% below standstill funding
While Welsh National Opera has again received the largest single Arts Council of Wales funding allocation, the company says it amounts to a 10 per cent cut against its application for standstill funding. The company had applied for £4.5m but as part of Arts Council Wales’s Investment Review, it has received a conditional offer of £4.1m…