The Pied Piper & The Crab: WNO Youth Opera in double bill by Jonathan Willocks & Paul Ayres

The 80-strong voices of WNO Youth Opera will be back on stage at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on 27 and 28 May 2023 with a double bill featuring two contemporary, story-based operas, Jonathan Willcocks' The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Paul Ayres' The Crab the Played with the Sea. 

The two are directed by Angharad Lee, with Dan Perkin conducting an instrumental ensemble, whilst Céleste Langrée's designs are inspired by the youth camps of Llangrannog and Glan-Llyn and the vibrancy of village playgrounds.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin is Jonathan Willcocks' musical adaptation of the familiar legend using a text by Robert Browning. The Crab that Played with the Sea is Paul Ayres' mini opera-musical for all ages based on the story by Rudyard Kipling.

Full details from the WNO website.

A weekend to celebrate all things woodwind: the WhirlWinds Festival at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (Photo Kirsten McTernan)

The Autumn season of concerts at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff includes the WhirlWinds Festival (14-16 October 2022), a weekend curated by Robert Plane, the college's head of woodwind, to celebrate all things woodwind, and hear an incredible range of instruments played in classical and jazz styles. The festival is opened by jazz-legend Courtney Pine in concert with pianist Zoe Rahman, with a new album, Spirituality, bringing the bass clarinet to the fore.

The woodwind quintet, The Orsino Ensemble, present two concerts Youth and Tradewinds as well as a masterclass, and they will also be popping up in the foyer with a series of Cameos performing eclectic works embracing electronics. Clarinettist Robert Plane will be performing Boulez' Dialogue de l’ombre double combining live performance with pre-recorded tracks, and Plane also joins forces with former colleagues from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for Mozart's Gran Partita, side by side with college students.

Students and junior college performers will be giving free foyer events, including the UK premiere of Nicola LeFanu’s evocative In the Forests of the Night alongside a Led Zeppelin classic in the student saxophonists' concert Stairway to Heaven.

College students will be joining with performers from Wells Cathedral School for a lunchtime concert, and there will be a massed performance, Community Currents (16/10/2022) bringing together students from music services, as well as enthusiastic amateurs of all ages directed by Ceri Rees, director of the Royal Welsh College Big Band.

Full details from the college's website.

RWCMD announces new scholarship celebrating the life of Sir Geraint Evans whose centenary is this year

Edward Kim performing at the celebration of Sir Geraint Evans at RWCMD (Photo Kirsten McTernan)

This year is the centenary of the great Welsh baritone, Sir Geraint Evans and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) has been celebrating. Sir Geraint was the college's president when he died in 1992, and to mark the centenary there was a musical event, Not a bad voice and the announcement of a new full scholarship.

To inspire future singers through his example, a £150,000 fund will provide this new scholarship to one student per year in RWCMD's David Seligman Opera School for the next ten years in Sir Geraint’s name. The scholarship, which favours baritones and Welsh candidates, was announced at Not A Bad Voice at the college on 29 September 2022. The first Sir Geraint Evans Centenary Scholar is South Korean baritone, Edward Kim, who joined the opera school in 2021 and who performed at Not A Bad Voice  alongside fellow RWCMD students. 

In 2021 RWCMD also announced a programme, awarding bursaries of up to £1200 to all its new UK undergraduate students with a household income of below £30k per annum, further helping its students in financial need, encouraging diversity and giving opportunities to talented young people, whatever their financial circumstances.  

Not A Bad Voice, led by Nicola Heywood-Thomas, celebrated Sir Geraint’s life with film, singing and storytelling from those who knew him and those he continues to inspire, including Sir Geraint's sons' Huw and Alun, RWCMD director of music, Tim Rhys-Evans, RWCMD head of cocal studies, Mary King, Scottish baritone Donald Maxwell, and students of the College.

I was lucky enough to hear Sir Geraint in a number of unforgettable performances at the Royal Opera House in the early 1980s, including as Coppélius in Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the title role in Don Pasquale and Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore (his final operatic role at the Royal Opera House).

 Further information from the RWCMD website. 

Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama launches Opera 360

The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD) is launching a new on-line course, Opera 360 in September 2022. Opera 360 will present short courses for anyone who has a deep love of opera and wants a strong connection with opera that goes beyond appreciation whatever their stage of life, as well as launching a full Opera 360 Masters, designed to develop the skills of those wanting to work in the industry in non-performance roles. The masters will incorporate all the modules in the shorter courses.

Opera 360 will be an industry-led, digital course that invites opera lovers, arts professionals and students alike to gain unrivalled, behind the scenes knowledge of the industry with expert guidance given by those who make opera. It will offer detailed investigation into both the artistic and administrative practices of the global opera business. 

As an on-line initiative Opera 360 will be available to people from all over the UK and internationally. Opera 360 is in association with the David Seligman Opera School at RWCMD.  It aims to provide a world-class training environment for those wishing to pursue a career in opera working in partnership with Welsh National Opera (WNO). Guest lecturers will include Aidan Lang, general director of WNO, David Jackson, artistic director of Cardiff Singer of the World, soprano Susan Bullock, and conductor Carlo Rizzi who is president of the David Seligman Opera School and conductor laureate at WNO. 

Carlo Rizzi commented, "Opera is the most complex of art forms bringing live music, theatre, design and story-telling together. When audiences see and listen to an opera, few are aware what lies behind each performance and learning about this through first-hand experience is a wonderful new offer from RWCMD." 

Full details from the RWCMD website.

New operas, a new team - Welsh National Opera approaches its 75th anniversary

Olivia Fuchs' production of Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier - Lucia Cervoni, Margaret Baiton, Louise Alder
WNO 2017 (photo Bill Cooper)

Welsh National Opera turns 75 in 2021 and its recently announced 2020/21 season sees the company approaching that milestone with a new team firmly in place; general director Aidan Lang [previously in charge of Seattle Opera, New Zealand Opera and the Buxton Festival] has been in post since July 2019 and music director Tomáš Hanus has renewed his contract to 2026, a position he took over in 2016. But that does not mean that the companies previous artistic director, Sir David Pountney, is completely out of the picture as Pountney is heavily involved in a new work being premiered in Autumn 2020, Will Todd's Migrations which forms part of the Mayflower 2020 celebrations. The opera will continue WNO's work with refugees, which began last year, and the company is also extending its outreach and engagement works.

For the other new production for 2020/21, Gounod's Faust sees the company launch its 75th birthday celebrations with one of the first operas it performed. Music director Tomáš Hanus conducts two operas, Janáček's Jenůfa and Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, as well as giving concerts with the WNO Orchestra. The WNO Youth Opera will be taking to the main stage with Shostakovich's Cheryomushki.

Celebrating 70 years at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff

Carlo Rizzi conducts the orchestra of Welsh National Opera on Friday 15 November 2019 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD). The concert will feature young singers from RWCMD's David Seligman Opera School in scenes and arias from opera, and the concert takes place in RWCMD's Dora Stoutzker Hall.

The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama was founded in 1949 as the Cardiff College of Music, and was originally housed in Cardiff Castle, and is now in purpose built premises in Bute Park. Following an international competition, a new expansion designed by BFLS opened in 2011 featuring an acoustically excellent 450‐seat chamber recital hall (the ‘Dora Stoutzker Hall’), a 180‐ seat theatre (the ‘Richard Burton Theatre’), four rehearsal studios, an exhibition gallery (the ‘Linbury Gallery’) as well as generous foyer areas, a terrace overlooking Bute Park and a new Café Bar. Further information on and images of the new buildings at Dezeen.

Further information from the RWCMD's website.

BBC Hoddinott Hall @ 10

BBC NOW in BBC Hoddinott Hall

This year the BBC Hoddinott Hall, in the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, celebrates its 10th anniversary and the hall's resident orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (BBC NOW)kicks off the celebrations with a concert on 25 January 2019. 

Conducted by Martyn Brabbins and by Holly Mathieson the orchestra will give the premiere of Kenneth Hesketh's Piano Concerto 'Uncoiling the River' with pianist Clare Hammond, plus Alun Hoddinott's Taliesin, Rhian Samuel's Brass Express, Sarah Lianne Lewis's Is there no seeker of dreams that were? and Andrzej Panufnik's Sinfonia Sacra (Symphony No.3).

BBC NOW's disc of Kenneth Hesketh's orchestral music In Ictu Oculi: Orchestral Works was released in October 2018 on the Paladino label [see my review]. Clare Hammond, the soloist in Hesketh's concerto, has recorded a disc of Hesketh's piano music especially written for her, Horae (pro Clara) [see my review].

The concert includes music by three Welsh composers from three different generations. Alan Hoddinott's Taliesin was commissioned by the Swansea Festival of Music and Arts, and premiered by BBC NOW in 2009. Rhian Samuel's Brass Express was written in 1995 as a 75th anniversary commission from the College of Estate Management, Reading University. Sarah Lianne Lewis, who graduated from Cardiff University in 2011, wrote Is there no seeker of dreams that were? in 2016 when it was premiered by BBC NOW, and the work was shortlisted in ISCM World Music Days 2017.

Full details from the BBC website.

Premiere of Paul Mealor's Symphony No. 3

Illustration for Paradiso by Gustave Dore.

On 30 November 2018, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conductor Geoffrey Paterson, will be giving the premiere of Paul Mealor's Symphony No. 3 'Illumination' at the BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff. Inspired by the final section of Dante's The Divine Comedy in which the Italian poet describes his journey through Heaven, the things he sees and the people he encounters on the way to the true home of God, saints, angels and the faithful, the symphony is a single-movement work in which Mealor meditates on the images from Dante's poem and uses a variety of techniques from tuned wine-glasses to structural devices based on the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Section to bring Dante's ideas to musical life.

The concert also includes the UK premiere of Jonathan Dove's Sunshine (originally commissioned by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra), William Mathias' Helios (written in 1975 in memory of Grace Williams), Per Nørgård’s Iris (a work from 1966 which, like Mealor's symphony, uses the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Mean), and Sibelius' Night Ride and Sunrise.

The concert is at 2pm on 30 November 2018 and will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and subsequently available for 30 days on BBC iPlayer. Further details from the BBC website.