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Music Theatre Wales are premiering a new opera this week, a co-commission with the Royal Opera House. Eleanor Alberga and Donald Sturrock's opera Letters of a Love Betrayed receives its premiere at the Royal Opera House on Friday 2nd October and after 3 more performances there goes on tour to Oxford, Cardiff, Manchester, Huddersfield, Mold, Edinburgh and Aberystwyth; a total of 10 performances being admirable exposure for a new opera. It seems to be Alberga's first opera, though her period as Music Director of London Contemporary Dance Theatre will have given her the sort of experience necessary.

The piece is based on a short story by Isabel Allende, adapted by librettist Donald Sturrock. Sturrock is Artistic Director of the Roald Dahl Foundation, which perhaps seems a strange qualification for a librettist. But Sturrock is trying to accumulate a library of orchestral pieces and operas for children based on Dahl's stories and he and Alberga have already worked together on a previous piece. So the augury's seem pretty good for this new piece