Mid Wales Opera (MWO) was founded in 1988 by Barbara McGuire and Keith Darlington and quickly grew into one of the UK’s premier mid-scale touring opera companies with performances across England and Wales.
Following the appointment in 2017 of Richard Studer and Jonathan Lyness as joint Artistic Directors, MWO have created a blueprint for touring opera across rural areas, with two fully staged opera productions each year across Wales and the Borders, community and school productions, educational workshops, concerts and recitals and a widely acclaimed collaboration with Ensemble Cymru.
Mid Wales Opera plays a critical role in the performing arts sector of Wales. No other company has regularly produced as diverse a body of operatic work across so much of the country. In all of our work, including our significant engagement with both primary and secondary schools, our aim is to build audiences for the future, and to demystify something that is mistakenly regarded as difficult, demonstrating that opera, with its great stories and wonderful music, can be a meaningful, uplifting and life-affirming experience for everyone, of every age and background.
This mission is powered by our geographic reach to venues often under-valued and frequently at the heart of some of Wales’s most deprived communities, enabling access to live opera in places which would otherwise have little or no provision of live classical music and opera.
All our staged productions are sung in English, enabling 100% of our audience to understand the text and follow the stories, thus eradicating one of the barriers often associated with opera.
For many years MWO has been fully supported by Arts Council Wales. However, at the end of March 2024, ACW’s core support of the company was entirely withdrawn. MWO has had to re-think its capabilities and the extent of its output to place itself on a financially sustainable footing. While planning for the future the company continues to provide access to the inspirational experience of live opera in communities across Wales and beyond, to offer vital opportunities for young artists to develop their professional careers and to employa vast range of Welsh and Wales-based artists.
MWO’s future sustainability is supported by Powys County Council’s Shared Prosperity Fund allocation (in 2024), the Colwinston Charitable Trust, Laidlaw Opera Trust and the Gwendoline and Margaret Davies Trust, as well as individual giving at our live events and through our website. We have a small but strong group of regular supporters who contribute to the MWO Friends and Patron’s Circle.
To support the work that we do, you can donate today, join our Friends scheme, or volunteer at one of our upcoming events.
You can also sign up to our newsletter to stay connected with us and up to date on our activities.
For more details about us as a team, visit our staff & board pages.
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Michael White, Grammophone / Opera Now
“Though small in scale, Mid Wales Opera’s production of Berlioz’s little-known opera brought great finesse […] It was brilliant: clever, sharp, and done (in English) with finesse”
David Truslove, Opera Today
“this show will charm and captivate…Mid Wales Opera has done it again and delivered a corker of a production”
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Rian Evans, The Guardian
“There is a wonderful sense of a defiant upholding of MWO values by artistic director/designer Richard Studer and music director Jonathan Lyness. It is as good a production as any in their 7-year tenure.”
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Clare Stevens, Opera Now
“This is an opera that stands or falls more than most on the quality of the two main principals, and in Bouton and the Welsh soprano Mari Wyn Williams who sang Lady Macbeth, MWO struck gold”
Thanks to the enormous outpouring of love – and money! – from our friends and supporters, and from opera lovers across the country – and a hugely important grant from Powys County Council’s Shared Prosperity Fund allocation, we are now actively developing our artistic plans for the next two years… find out more …or…