Music Theatre Wales production

About Music Theatre Wales

Music Theatre Wales is the UK’s leading touring contemporary opera company. We are dedicated to performing ground-breaking and stimulating contemporary chamber opera –works we have commissioned from the very best composers and writers, and acknowledged masterpieces of the recent past. We are the only company working at this scale, to this standard, with this mission, in the country.

Alongside the performance and creation of new intimate opera, touring lies at the heart of our existence. We are dedicated to enabling audiences across the UK, from the heart of rural Wales to the Peak District in England, from one capital city to another, to encounter and experience new work of the highest possible quality. Aberystwyth can have what London aspires to achieve!

Since our foundation in 1988, we have performed across the UK including many major festivals, and toured to Germany, France, Norway, Ireland, Canada and The Netherlands. We 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 the constant praise of critics and audiences over its 18-year history.

Past highlights include: Punch and Judy by Harrison Birtwistle, The Rape of Lucretia by Britten, The Lighthouse and The Martyrdom of Saint Magnus by 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.

In November 2002, Music Theatre Wales became the first Associate Company of the Royal Opera House. We launched our new partnership with a run of performances of The Electrification of the Soviet Union. This venture has brought contemporary chamber repertoire and new artists into the heart of the Royal Opera House and given MTW a fabulous London home.

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 ROH, the production toured to large and enthusiastic audiences throughout England and Wales during October and November 2004. In 2005 we undertook our first major co-production with ROH: Sir Michael Tippett’s The Knot Garden. With innovative design by contemporary visual artists Jane and Louise Wilson using cutting-edge video technology, the opera toured to our biggest audiences yet across the country, and attracted huge amounts of interest from the media. 2006 saw the tour of a new commission from Lynne Plowman and Martin Riley: House of the Gods played to enthusiastic and youthful audiences from Durham to Brighton. And in 2007 we presented the UK premiere performances of Philippe Boesmans’ Julie.

Future commissions include Letters of a Love Betrayed - a new opera by Eleanor Alberga and Donald Sturrock, based on a short story by Isabel Allende, and a chamber opera from Huw Watkins and David Harsent – Crime Fiction.

In 2008 we are proud to present the World Premiere of For You, the new opera by Michael Berkeley and Ian McEwan.

“This is one of Britain’s most able and inventive touring opera companies”
Opera Now

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