Welsh National Opera’s new production of Blaze of Glory! centres around the fate of a local Welsh mining community who come together to reform their Male Voice Choir. Ahead of its opening performance at Wales Millennium Centre on Thursday 23 February, let’s take a look at some Welsh choral favourites, including one which features in the opera.
1. Cwm Rhondda (Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer)
Cwm Rhondda, also known as Bread of Heaven, is one of Wales’s best-known hymns, so well loved it is sung across the world and often used in grand state occasions, such as the recent September 2022 service of thanksgiving for Queen Elizabeth II in Llandaff Cathedral. The 1762 text of poet William Williams Pantycelyn was set to music by John Hughes in 1905-07, nearly a century and a half after the text was first published. A great favourite of choirs in Wales, it is a piece core to their musical repertoire and regularly heard on recordings of Welsh choral music as well as at national rugby games.
2. Tydi a Roddaist (Thou Gavest)
The famous Welsh bard T Rowlands Hughes wrote a radio play script for broadcast on St David’s Day in 1938. The intention for the play’s climax was to play a Welsh hymn recorded by a Welsh Male Voice Choir; the result was T Rowlands Hughes’s poem Tydi a Roddaist set to music by Arwel Hughes, who was working in the BBC’s music department at the time. The lifting melody and powerful ending of Amens showcases the power of singing for the love of one’s own country.
3. Tangnefeddwyr (The Peacemakers)
The poet Waldo Williams wrote the poem Y Tangnefeddwyr during the Second World War in response to the Swansea Blitz bombings of 1941. Eric Jones’s musical setting of the poem is a cry for peace during a time of war and can be found on recordings by choirs such as Fron Male Voice Choir, CF1, London Welsh Male Voice Choir and the Duvant Male Voice Choir
4. Myfanwy
Myfanwy is one of the most famous songs in the Welsh choral repertoire. The tender love song’s lyrics written by Richard Davies (known by his bardic name ‘Mynyddog’) are accompanied by music by Joseph Parry (1841-1903), one of Wales’s most famous composers known for composing the first Welsh-language opera, Blodwen. Myfanwy was first performed in 1875 by the Aberystwyth and University Musical Society.
5. Gwahoddiad (Invitation)
Many who believe Gwahoddiad to be a Welsh hymn may be surprised to learn it was actually written and composed in 1872 by the American minister and gospel song composer, Lewis Hartsough. The English lyrics were later translated into Welsh by Ieuan Gwyllt and has since been hugely popular by choirs in Welsh. The piece even makes an appearance in WNO’s new opera, Blaze of Glory!, centred around a male voice choir which reforms in a time of tragedy.
Come and hear some of the greatest Welsh choral music live during WNO’s Spring 2023 Season at a performance of Blaze of Glory!which opens in Cardiff’s Wales Millennium Centre on 23 February 2023 before touring to Llandudno, Milton Keynes, Bristol, Birmingham, and Southampton until 20 May 2023.