Designed and delivered in collaboration with Fast Track Cymru, Welsh National Opera’s Three Letters uses music and performance to tackle societal stigma around HIV in support of Wales’s ambitious journey towards achieving zero HIV transmissions by 2030.

Drawing inspiration from the AIDS Quilt Songbook project which began in America in 1992, Three Letters is a musical chronicle of Wales’s HIV past, present, and future, working with school groups, local communities and artists to raise public awareness of the contemporary realities of HIV.

The project began in September 2021 with a creative workshop day for over 160 Year 10 students at Cardiff West Community High School, which included sessions with writer and activist Mercy Shibemba, playwright and actor Nathaniel J Hall (It’s A Sin, First Time, Toxic), and representatives from Fast Track Cardiff and Vale. A smaller group of students from the school subsequently collaborated with Mercy, composer Michael Betteridge, and singer Siân Cameron, to create We learn, we know, we understand.

The second instalment saw Mercy Shibemba collaborate with Welsh singer songwriter Eädyth Crawford and WNO Vocal Intern Aliyah Wiggins to create All These Dreams, a piece about finding your voice and discovering yourself.

Inspired by the landmark film Philadelphia, the third and final instalment is an extraordinary rendition of the aria La mamma morta from the opera Andrea Chénier by Umberto Giordano. Here, WNO Orchestra collaborated with soprano Camilla Roberts and Nathaniel J Hall who recites a new spoken-word text by Andrew Loretto.

In 2024, WNO partnered with Cardiff Curriculum and Fast Track Cymru/Cardiff and Vale for a Three Letters legacy project, curating a series of creative arts resources on the theme of HIV education which have been made available to all school learners in Wales. The resource features a new song, ‘Cofio (What It Means to Be Living)’, composed and performed by students from Ysgol Plasmawr and Cardiff West CHS, in collaboration with Mercy Shibemba, Nathaniel J Hall, Dan Perkin (composer), Andrew Loretto (writer), and Jenny Walker (soprano).