page_title: Welsh National Opera
section_title: 21st century
hierarchical_section_title: Welsh National Opera / 21st century
caption_attribution_description: The Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, Wales
context_page_description: Welsh National Opera is an opera company based in Cardiff, Wales; it gave its first performances in 1946. It began as a mainly amateur body and transformed into an all-professional ensemble by 1973. In its early days the company gave a single week's annual season in Cardiff, gradually extending its schedule to become an all-year-round operation, with its own salaried chorus and orchestra. It has been described by The New York Times as "one of the finest operatic ensembles in Europe".
  For most of its existence the company lacked a permanent base in Cardiff, but in 2004 it moved into the new Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay. The company tours nationally and internationally, giving more than 120 performances annually, with a repertoire of eight operas each year, to a combined audience of more than 150,000 people. Its most frequent venues other than Cardiff are 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.
context_section_description: The company entered the new millennium in a state of some turmoil. A financial crisis had led to redundancies in the orchestra and the curtailment of the touring schedule; the conservative works chosen for 2001–02 were condemned by the press as "the dullest programme in recent memory"; and Rizzi was about to be replaced by a young and untried successor, Tugan Sokhiev. Rizzi had gained great respect and affection during his nine-year term as musical director; his successor's reign was brief and unhappy. Having taken up post in 2003, Sohkiev resigned precipitately the following year. Rizzi agreed to reorganise his schedule, and, to public and critical acclaim, returned to the musical directorship in time to prepare the company for its long-awaited move into a permanent base in Cardiff.
  After the collapse of the Cardiff Bay Opera House scheme, a new project, the Wales Millennium Centre, met with more success. The necessary consents and funding were obtained, and work began in 2002 on a new multipurpose arts centre on the Cardiff Bay site. The centre included a 1,900-seat theatre, which, among other uses, became WNO's home base from 2004, with its own rehearsal space and offices in the complex.
  In the first decade of the 21st century WNO gave more than 120 performances a year, with a repertoire, generally, of eight full-scale operas. Its regular audience figures totalled over 150,000 annually, in ten principal venues, three of them in Wales and seven in England. During this period the company was criticised for being insufficiently Welsh. A local politician, Adam Price, said that WNO ought to have a Welsh musical director; Alun Hoddinott said in 2004, "WNO has put on perhaps four or five Welsh operas over 20 years. ... They just seem to have an anti-Welsh music bias. I am sad that they do not do something for Welsh composers, especially young ones." A more positive view of WNO came from Scotland, where the two main newspapers, The Scotsman and The Herald, greeted a visit from the company in 2005 with enthusiastic praise, contrasting the flourishing of opera in Wales with its neglect by politicians in Scotland and the consequent decline of Scottish Opera. In 2010 WNO commissioned Gair ar Gnawd ("Word on Flesh"), by Pwyll ap Siôn and Menna Elfyn, with words in Welsh, described as "a contemporary story about Wales today ... inspired by the translation of the Bible".
  From 2006 to 2011 the chief executive (titled "artistic director") was John Fisher. His term overlapped with that of Lothar Koenigs who was musical director from 2009 to 2016. A highlight of this period was the 2010 production of Die Meistersinger, produced by Richard Jones, starring Bryn Terfel as Hans Sachs. The production won superlatives from reviewers.
  In 2011 David Pountney was appointed to succeed Fisher as chief executive. He had worked with the company since the 1970s, most recently on a 2006 The Flying Dutchman with Terfel which was set in space. In 2013 he programmed a trilogy of operas set in Tudor England: Donizetti's Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux, with another trilogy the following year, on the theme of fallen women – Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Henze's Boulevard Solitude and Verdi's La traviata. For 2016 Pountney scheduled another trilogy, this time on the theme of Figaro, consisting of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini's The Barber of Seville and a new work, Figaro Gets a Divorce with music by Elena Langer and libretto by Pountney.
  In September 2015 WNO announced the appointment of Tomáš Hanus as its next music director, taking office for the 2016–17 season. At the same time Carlo Rizzi was named the company's conductor laureate, with immediate effect.
caption: Welsh Millennium Centre, Cardiff, WNO's home base since 2004
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