Welsh National Opera

upright=1.3|thumb|Wales Millennium Centre

upright=1.3|thumb|Logo of Welsh National Opera

Welsh National Opera (WNO; ) is an opera company based in Cardiff, Wales. The company presents eight operas a year in about 120 domestic and international performances. It has been described by The New York Times as "one of the finest operatic ensembles in Europe".

Background

Choral singing became increasingly popular in 19th-century Wales, principally owing to the rise of the eisteddfod as a symbol of its culture. The first Welsh National Opera Company was formed in 1890. A local newspaper commented that it was remarkable that "a race of people to whom vocal music is a ruling passion should not generations ago have established a permanent national opera". The company gave performances of operas by the Welsh composer Joseph Parry in Cardiff and on tour in Wales. The company, predominantly amateur with some professional guest singers from the London stage, gave numerous performances of Parry's Blodwen and Arienwen, composed in 1878 and 1890 respectively.

A Cardiff Grand Opera Society ran from 1924 to 1934. It presented week-long annual seasons of popular operas including Faust, Carmen and Il trovatore, and like its predecessor was mainly an amateur body, with professional guest principals. Apart from the productions of these two enterprises, opera in Wales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was generally presented by visiting companies from England. They publicised their plan and held a general meeting of potential supporters in December 1943; at that meeting the name of the proposed organisation was changed to "Welsh National Opera Company". By January 1944 plans were far enough advanced for the company's first rehearsals to be held. Owen recruited a local businessman, W. H. (Bill) Smith (1894–1968), who agreed to serve as business manager. At first doubtful of the company's prospects, Smith became its dominant influence, leading fund-raiser, and chairman for twenty years from 1948.

Early years

The new company made its debut at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Cardiff on 15 April 1946 with a double bill of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci. The orchestra was professional, mostly drawn from members of the BBC Welsh Orchestra; all the singers were amateurs, except for Tudor Davies, a tenor well known at Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells, who sang Canio in Pagliacci. During the week-long season the new company also staged Faust, with Davies in the title role. Although nearing the end of his career he was a considerable box-office draw, and the company played to full houses.

Although Owen was the conductor for the performances of Cavalliera rusticana, and remained as musical director of the company until 1952, his health was fragile and he conducted none of the company's other productions. His colleague, the chorus master, Ivor John, was in charge of the first season's Pagliacci and Faust.

In 1948 the organisation was registered as a limited company, and the Cardiff season was extended from one week to two. The Times also praised the chorus: "It has body, lightness, rhythmic precision, and, most welcome of all, unflagging and spontaneous freshness." By this time the company had expanded its repertoire to take in Carmen, La traviata, Madame Butterfly, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Bartered Bride and Die Fledermaus. The Pavilion was acoustically mediocre and lacked an orchestra pit; two years later the company moved again, to the New Theatre where it played Cardiff seasons across the next fifty years. The 1952 season attracted particular interest because it included what was then a rarity: Verdi's Nabucco. I Lombardi in 1956, and The Battle of Legnano, under the shortened title The Battle, in 1960. The 1952 Nabucco was the WNO's first production for which costumes and scenery were specially designed (by Patrick Robertson) rather than hired.

In 1953 the company staged its first work by a Welsh composer: Menna by Arwel Hughes. The same year marked WNO's first appearances outside Wales, playing a week at Bournemouth in April, and a week at Manchester in October, when The Manchester Guardian found the soloists first-rate but the chorus disappointing, in both Nabucco and Il trovatore. A reviewer in The Musical Times commented on potential difficulties in assembling the wholly amateur chorus for performances beyond daily travelling range of their day jobs. The second season at Sadler's Wells in the summer of 1956, included productions of Nabucco, I Lombardi and Lohengrin, achieving rave reviews. Kenneth Loveland of the South Wales Argus wrote a glowing piece under his byline 'Stroller' "Tonight, amongst working-class streets of the Angel, Islington, I was privileged to witness a body of men and women doing more for Wales than all your sounding harps...or tub thumping politicians".

thumb|left|150px|[[Geraint Evans, guest principal in 1966 and 1969]]

By the mid-1950s professional singers were cast in leading roles in most productions; they included Walter Midgley in Tosca and La bohème (1955), Raimund Herincx in Mefistofele (1957), and Joan Hammond in Madame Butterfly (1958).

During the 1960s the company continued to widen its range. Its first Wagner production, Lohengrin, and its first Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro, were both performed in 1962, conducted by Charles Groves. Another Welsh opera, Hughes's Serch yw'r Doctor ("Love, the Doctor") was staged in 1960. Established singers guesting with the company included Geraint Evans who played the title role in Don Pasquale in 1966, and Ian Wallace in the same part the following year. Evans was also seen as Leporello in Don Giovanni in 1966 and as Falstaff in 1969.

The gradual switch from amateur to professional continued in 1968, when for the first time the chorus was supplemented by a smaller, professional group of singers; the mix of amateur and professional choristers continued over the next five years. At the end of the 1960s the main WNO company, now a year-round operation, consisted of 8 salaried principal singers, 57 guest soloists and a chorus of 90 amateurs and 32 professionals. As well as the Bournemouth players, the company engaged the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony and Ulster orchestras for different venues. In the last season of the decade 32 performances were given in Cardiff and 61 elsewhere in the UK. In addition to the main company, WNO maintained two smaller groups: one, with orchestra, toured Welsh towns, the other, consisting of 12 singers with piano, toured 79, mostly small, towns in Wales and England. WNO instituted its own training scheme for young singers during the decade. The critic Rodney Milnes wrote in 1975 about WNO's productions:

In 1973 Geliot's WNO staging of Britten's Billy Budd with Allen in the title role was presented on a Swiss tour, and two years later it was given in Barcelona. The company returned to London with its participation in the Amoco Festival of Opera at the Dominion Theatre in 1979, presenting The Makropoulos Case, The Magic Flute, Ernani, Madame Butterfly, and Tristan and Isolde to capacity audiences.

thumb|upright|[[Tito Gobbi, WNO's Falstaff in 1972]]

The company's traditional preference for the Italian repertoire was partly redressed during the decade: productions include WNO's first staging of a Richard Strauss opera, Elektra, in 1978. A new Welsh work, Alun Hoddinott's The Beach of Falesá, was presented in 1974.

Among the guest artists who appeared with the company in the 1970s were the baritone Tito Gobbi, as Falstaff (1972), and the conductors James Levine (Aida, 1970) and Reginald Goodall (Tristan and Isolde, 1979).

In the late 1970s WNO combined with the Cardiff-based Welsh Drama Company, becoming the Welsh National Opera and Drama Company. The work of the drama company came under continued criticism, the Welsh Arts Council cut its grant, and the partnership ended in 1979 with the formal closure of the Welsh Drama Company.

1980s

During the 1980s WNO continued to expand in scope. Handel (Rodelinda, 1981) and Martinů (The Greek Passion, 1981) were added to the company's repertoire, and in 1983 Das Rheingold was staged in the WNO's first Ring cycle, followed by the other three operas of the cycle over the next two years. Das Rheingold, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were conducted by the company's musical director, Richard Armstrong; Die Walküre (1984) was conducted by Goodall; it was seen as a coup for the company to secure his services – he was described by The Guardian as the greatest living Wagnerian conductor – but the casting of the whole cycle was criticised for some serious weaknesses among the principal singers, and reviewers were generally unimpressed by Göran Järvefelt's production.

The chief executive, Brian McMaster, did not appoint a replacement to Geliot as principal director during the 1980s, preferring to engage guest producers. Boyd mentions Andrei Serban's Eugene Onegin (1980) among the successes and Lucian Pintilie's Carmen (1983) and Ruth Berghaus's Don Giovanni (1984) as productions that received more mixed responses. Harry Kupfer's Fidelio (1981) was condemned by The Daily Telegraph as "a piece of Marxist polemic" making "political sport" of Beethoven's work. McMaster was thought by some too inclined to favour radical eastern European directors: Jonathan Miller, a leading English director, commented that he did not intend to take Bulgarian nationality, although it was "a must before Brian pays any attention".

thumb|[[Charles Mackerras|Sir Charles Mackerras (pictured in 2005) became musical director in 1986.]]

Armstrong stepped down in 1986 after thirteen years as musical director; he was succeeded by Mackerras, whose association with the company dated back more than thirty years. Among the features of his six-year tenure was an increasing use of surtitles for performances not given in English. In the company's early days, all operas had been sung in English, but as more international stars began to appear as guest principals the language policy had to be reconsidered: few of the leading names in world opera were interested in relearning their roles in English. WNO steered a middle course between the practices of the two main London companies; after the 1960s The Royal Opera had generally given operas in the original language, and English National Opera was committed to opera in English. WNO's practice varied, after its early years. Examples from the 1980s include Wagner's Tristan und Isolde sung in German, and the Ring in English; and Verdi's The Force of Destiny given in English and Otello in Italian. Mackerras was a strong advocate of performance in the original language, with surtitles: "I can't imagine a greater advance for opera. … What a gift! It's like Siegfried understanding the woodbird."

1990s

McMaster resigned in 1991, having led the company to international status, with performances at La Scala, Milan; the Metropolitan Opera, New York; and in Tokyo. One of the last legacies of his tenure was the 1992 production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, directed by Peter Stein and conducted by Pierre Boulez. The New York Times called WNO "one of the finest operatic ensembles in Europe" and noted that the first night of the Debussy work, in Cardiff, "attracted 80 critics from all over the United Kingdom and the Continent ... the most prestigious, intensely awaited event of the British operatic season." The production was given at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, a few weeks afterwards.

McMaster was followed as chief executive by Matthew Epstein, whose three years in charge (1991–94) were described in a 2006 study by Paul Atkinson as "a less happy and less successful period". In The Observer, Michael Ratcliffe called the company "the most popular, populist and consistently successful arts organisation ever to come out of Wales ... with the loyalty and affection of audiences in Cardiff and across England … 'The people's opera' is not a myth. It happened here." The jubilee celebrations were overshadowed by the collapse of a plan for a purpose-built home for the company, the Cardiff Bay Opera House. The company played three short seasons at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in the mid-1990s, featuring Tristan und Isolde and La favorita in 1993, The Yeomen of the Guard in 1995, and The Rake's Progress and the jubilee double bill of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci in 1996. In 1996 WNO commissioned Sir Peter Maxwell Davies to write an opera for the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary. The resulting opera was The Doctor of Myddfai, whose libretto written by David Pountney and included Welsh-language songs, based on a 12th-century folk tale. It premiered on 10 July 1996 at the North Wales Theatre in Llandudno with following performances in 1996. It was designed by Sue Huntley and Donna Muir.

21st century

The company entered the new millennium in a state of some turmoil. A financial crisis had led to redundancies in the orchestra and the curtailment of the touring schedule; the conservative works chosen for 2001–02 were condemned by the press as "the dullest programme in recent memory"; and Rizzi was about to be replaced by a young and untried successor, Tugan Sokhiev. Rizzi had gained great respect and affection during his nine-year term as musical director; his successor's reign was brief and unhappy. Having taken up post in 2003, Sohkiev resigned precipitately the following year. Rizzi agreed to reorganise his schedule, and, to public and critical acclaim, returned to the musical directorship in time to prepare the company for its long-awaited move into a permanent base in Cardiff.

thumb|Welsh Millennium Centre, Cardiff, WNO's home base since 2004

After the collapse of the Cardiff Bay Opera House scheme, a new project, the Wales Millennium Centre, met with more success. The necessary consents and funding were obtained, and work began in 2002 on a new multipurpose arts centre on the Cardiff Bay site. The centre included a 1,900-seat theatre, which, among other uses, became WNO's home base from 2004, with its own rehearsal space and offices in the complex.

In the first decade of the 21st century WNO gave more than 120 performances a year, with a repertoire, generally, of eight full-scale operas. Its regular audience figures totalled over 150,000 annually, in ten principal venues, three of them in Wales and seven in England.