Music Theatre Wales
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Music Theatre Wales is a touring contemporary opera company, based in Cardiff, UK, but working across Wales, the UK, and internationally. They are dedicated to performing ground-breaking and stimulating contemporary chamber opera – works commissioned from living composers and writers, and acknowledged masterpieces of the recent past.
Since its foundation in 1988 Music Theatre Wales has performed across the UK including many major festivals, and toured to Germany, France, Norway, Ireland, Canada and The Netherlands. they have been broadcast on BBC radio and television and recorded on CD. The company was twice short-listed for the Prudential Award for Opera for “creativity, excellence, innovation and accessibility” and has won praise from critics and audiences.
Past productions include: Punch and Judy by Harrison Birtwistle, The Rape of Lucretia by Benjamin Britten, The Lighthouse and The Martyrdom of Saint Magnus by Peter Maxwell Davies, The Fall of the House of Usher by Philip Glass. Commissions include In the House of Crossed Desires by John Woolrich, The Roswell Incident and Flowers by John Hardy, Ubu by Andrew Toovey, Jane Eyre by Michael Berkeley, Gwyneth and the Green Knight by Lynne Plowman, and The Piano Tuner by Nigel Osborne.
More recent productions include a commission from Nigel Osborne: The Piano Tuner - based on the best-selling novel by Daniel Mason, with a libretto by Amanda Holden. A co-commission with the Royal Opera House, the production toured to large and enthusiastic audiences throughout England and Wales during October and November 2004. In 2005 Music Theatre Wales undertook their first major co-production with the Royal Opera House: Sir Michael Tippett’s The Knot Garden.
2006 sees the tour of a new commission from Lynne Plowman and Martin Riley: House of the Gods, which opened in May 2006 to wide critical acclaim: “An outright winner” – The Stage. Future commissions include, for 2008, a new opera by Michael Berkeley with libretto by Ian McEwan – his first opera libretto – and, for 2009, a new work from Aribert Reimann.
In November 2002, Music Theatre Wales became the first Associate Company of the Royal Opera House. This partnership was launched with a run of performances of The Electrification of the Soviet Union, and has brought contemporary chamber repertoire and new artists to the Royal Opera House and provided them with a London home.
