We are delighted to announce our WNODERFUL 2023/2024 Season which includes four new productions, three of which WNO will be performing for the very first time.
Our Autumn 2023 Season opens with the Welsh premiere of Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov’s twice-Grammy winning work. In a dazzling display of opera and flamenco, Ainadamar(The Fountain of Tears), is a spine-tingling spectacle which reimagines the life and legacy of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, directed by Olivier-winning choreographer, Deborah Colker. The Season will be completed with performances of Sir David McVicar’s acclaimed production of Verdi’s much-loved classic tale of thwarted love, scandal, and self-sacrifice - La traviata. Complementing the Season is a space-themed edition of our interactive family show,Play Opera LIVE!
Two new productions form our Spring 2024 Season, beginning with Mozart’s Così fan tutte under the baton of WNO Music Director Tomáš Hanus. This coming-of-age tale will take audiences back to school where four sixth formers discover the highs and lows of falling in love. A new production of Britten’s Death in Venice completes the Season of operas, which will be the first time we stage this opera. Olivia Fuchs returns to WNO to direct this new production which sees images of ravishing beauty as well as the exploration of the grotesque hidden beneath the search for the sublime. Rounding off the Season is an Opera Favourites concert – your ultimate operatic pick-and-mix.
Our Summer 2024 Season in Cardiff is a three-course operatic feast that welcomes back WNO Conductor Laureate Carlo Rizzi for Puccini’s Il trittico, a set of one-act operas (Il tabarro; Suor Angelica; Gianni Schicchi), melting jealousy, despair, and deception in the same pot.
Tickets go on sale at 10am on Wednesday 1 March, or you get ahead of the crowd and enjoy priority booking from Wednesday 22 February as a WNO Friend.
On the concert platform, WNO Orchestra return to the Cardiff Classical Series at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall with two concerts. The first will feature Brahms’s sublime First Symphony alongside Tchaikovsky’s overture-fantasy Romeo and Juliet, and Richard Strauss’s masterful Four Last Songs, sung by soprano Chen Reiss under the baton of WNO Music Director Tomáš Hanus. For the second, WNO Chorus join WNO Orchestra to perform Mozart’s timeless choral masterpiece, Requiem. Sign up to our mailing list to be among the first to hear when the concerts go on sale later in the spring.
Our varied programme of community and engagement activity includes the continuation of Wellness with WNO, Brave - a project highlighting the issue of child exploitation and modern-day slavery to children through music in an age-appropriate way, and Cradle Choir. Following on from the success of our work in the West Midlands, there will be a tour of Opera Tutti, concerts specifically devised for special schools for those with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD) in Wales for the first time, with members of WNO Orchestra. We will also be working in care homes across North Wales to provide a new opportunity for people who may not be able to attend a theatre or sit through a performance to access opera and classical music.
We look forward to sharing more WNODERFUL music with you in 2023/2024.
