Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera 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".
Launched in 1946 as a mainly amateur body, WNO had become an all-professional ensemble by 1973. Its season has grown from a single week of performances in Cardiff to a year-round operation with its own salaried chorus and orchestra. In 2004, the company moved to its first permanent headquarters, in the new Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay.
Besides Cardiff, the company most frequently performs in Llandudno in Wales and Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Plymouth, and Southampton in England.
Singers who have been associated with the company include Geraint Evans, Thomas Allen, Anne Evans, and Bryn Terfel. Guest artists from other countries have included Joan Hammond, Tito Gobbi and Elisabeth Söderström. Its conductors have included Sir Charles Mackerras, Reginald Goodall, James Levine and Pierre Boulez. The company has been led by Aidan Lang as its General Director since 2019.
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. An American tour was planned, but the company folded, and Parry's final opera, The Maid of Cefn Ydfa, was given at Cardiff by the Moody-Manners Opera Company in 1902.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.
In the 1930s Idloes Owen, a singing teacher and conductor, ran an amateur choir, the Lyrian Singers, based in Cardiff. In November 1941, together with John Morgan – a former Carl Rosa baritone – and Morgan's fiancée Helena Hughes Brown, Owen agreed to found the Lyrian Grand Opera Company, with Brown as secretary and Owen as conductor and general manager. 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. Smith, 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. Nevertheless, the expense of a professional orchestra and the hire of costumes and scenery outweighed the box-office receipts, and the season made a small loss. Finance remained a recurring problem over the succeeding decades.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 following year the company gave its first performances in Swansea. The chorus featured 120 performers by this time.
The company's first few seasons attracted little attention from the British musical establishment, but by the early 1950s London papers began to take notice. Picture Post hailed the WNO's chorus as the finest in Britain. 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 Times commented that Smith, Owen and their colleagues were "making history for Wales. The shackles of puritanism, which had kept this country from an art-form perfectly suited to its national talents and predilections had been broken for ever".
Consolidating: 1950s and 60s
In 1952 the company moved its Cardiff venue to the Sophia Gardens Pavilion, with the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra as the company's orchestra, replacing the previous ad hoc ensemble. 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. The company built a reputation for staging seldom-seen Verdi works, including The Sicilian Vespers staged in the same year, 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 rather than hired.In 1953 the company staged its first work by a Welsh composer: Menna by Arwel Hughes. The composer conducted, and the leads were sung by two professional guest stars, Richard Lewis and Elsie Morison. 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. By the time of the company's first London season – a week at Sadler's Wells in 1955 – the chorus was judged to be "lively and exciting", "vibrant" and "moving" and "joyous". 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".
By the mid-1950s professional singers were cast in leading roles in most productions; they included Walter Midgley in Tosca and La bohème, Raimund Herincx in Mefistofele, Heather Harper in La traviata, and Joan Hammond in Madame Butterfly. A possibility of strengthening the professional element of the company was mooted in 1958, when a merger was proposed with the Carl Rosa Company, which was in financial difficulties. The proposal was not followed through and WNO continued independently while the Carl Rosa folded.
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 was staged in 1960. The popular Italian repertoire remained the core of the annual seasons, mostly directed by the head of production, John Moody. Leading roles were taken by rising stars such as John Shirley-Quirk, Gwyneth Jones, Thomas Allen, Josephine Barstow and Margaret Price, the last of whom made her operatic debut with the company in 1962. 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.