As Mid Wales Opera completes its hugely successful SmallStages tour of Berlioz’s ‘Beatrice and Benedict’, the company’s chair has appealed for donations to ensure the company can continue its work until the end of 2024. 

Chair of the Board, Gareth Williams said: ‘Audiences across Wales and the Marches from Abergavenny to Holyhead and from Fishguard to Mold have expressed delight with MWO’s witty and joyful ‘Beatrice and Benedict’, which closed with a captivating performance in Ludlow’s Assembly Rooms on Saturday night. They have echoed the view of The Guardian’s Rian Evans that ‘Such a slick staging, with artistic values paramount, is delightful and it could not underline more emphatically the sheer incomprehensibility of the Arts Council of Wales’s recent decision to cut this company’s funding completely.’

Our thoughts are now turning to the future, with the first night of our much-anticipated new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, in a new orchestral version by our Music Director, Jonathan Lyness, on 2 March rapidly approaching. 

Unfortunately, beyond that, our future remains very uncertain. 

Our appeal against the Arts Council Wales’ decision to end our funding from April 2024 has been dismissed, despite an admission that their appraisal seriously misrepresented the way in which we pay our artists, and copious evidence of the enormous gap which the decision will leave both for audiences and for the career development of Welsh singers and musicians.

Nevertheless, we sincerely hope that we will be able to undertake a new SmallStages tour next autumn, as well as a schools’ residency in the early summer. While our accumulated reserves – together with the generosity of ‘Beatrice and Benedict’ audiences who donated more than £3000 – should take us most of the way towards this, additional financial support from our friends and well-wishers needed to ensure we can do so. 

Anyone wishing to support the work of Mid Wales Opera can donate online by going to https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/16112#!/DonationDetails or by cheque to Mid Wales Opera, Bryn Wgan, Caersws, SY17 5QU’.

The forthcoming Macbeth MainStages tour dates are as follows: 

Sat 2 March – Theatr Hafren, Newtown

Thu 7 March – Aberystwyth Arts Centre

Sat 9 March – Pontio, Bangor

Tue 12 March – William Aston Hall, Wrexham with Theatr Clwyd

Thu 14 March – Riverfront, Newport

Sat 16 March – Courtyard, Hereford

Tue 19 March – Ffwrnes, Llanelli

Thu 21 March – Torch Theatre, Milford Haven

Sat 23 March – Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon

Further information and booking details can be found on the Mid Wales Opera website.