The culmination of an inspirational week of music-making and rehearsals in Brecon and Hay, involving professionals, students and amateur musicians, the opera was sung in its original English libretto and accompanied by MWO’s OpenStages orchestra. The tragic tale of the love between Dido, Queen of Carthage and Aeneas, destroyed by the malevolent interference of a sorceress and her spirits...

Bernstein's one act opera is an exquisite dissection of the great American Dream, through the eyes of Sam and Dinah in their 1950's Pastel house and white picket fence marriage. Performed in Yannotta’s chamber arrangement for seven instrumentalists, with a cast of five led by MWO’s Music Director from the piano, the opera forms the first half of the evening, with the second half celebrating American opera and musical theatre...

Canio, the leader of a touring troupe of comedy actors, discovers that his wife Nedda is having an affair. But before finding out who it is, he must go on stage and perform the role of… a despairing husband whose wife is having an affair. Packed with sensational music, Pagliacci retains its cult status as the ultimate operatic ‘play-within-a-play’.

... a gripping tale of power, manipulation and tragic descent as Macbeth, a valiant general, succumbs to his wife’s persuasion, leading to a ruthless quest for the Scottish throne. Sung in English, accompanied by Ensemble Cymru and with a large cast, supplemented by community choruses, Mid Wales Opera presents its first-ever production of Verdi’s Macbeth as the culmination of its Shakespeare Season.

Berlioz’s final opera sets to music the wild and illogical whirlwind of falling in love, bringing a rich warmth of invention to Shakespeare that virtually no other composer has achieved. MWO’s production features six singers and four musicians, with an English singing translation by Amanda Holden, together with Shakespeare’s original texts adapted by Richard Studer and a new chamber arrangement by Jonathan Lyness.

Based on the Brothers Grimm’s fairytale, two children are banished to the enchanted woods by their hungry, frustrated parents. There, they wander into the clutches of a wicked witch determined to fatten them up and turn them into gingerbread. With only their cunning to protect them, how will they ever escape the oven?

Premiered in Barcelona in 1948, and rarely performed, this age-old children’s story tells of the wealth-seeking, match-making cat who, in return for a hat, a sword and a pair of boots, secures for his young master (a lowly miller) a kingdom and a royal marriage to a princess, tricking a slow-witted ogre out of his castle along the way.

It’s Christmas Eve and high above the streets of Paris a knock at the door begins the timeless love story of poet Rodolfo and his neighbour Mimi. Their fairytale romance feels like a Christmas miracle, but even the warmth of their love can’t defeat the winter chill – Mimi is desperately ill, and Rodolfo and his fellow bohemians can’t afford the help she needs.

Mid Wales Opera presents Puccini’s passionate late masterpiece Il tabarro, or ‘The Cloak’. Set on the banks of the Seine, this one act opera tells the short story of the barge owner Michele who suspects his young wife Giorgetta of being unfaithful. Packed with side plots and characters bringing to life the sights and sounds of 1900s Paris, the opera reaches its dramatic conclusion when Michele unexpectedly catches his wife’s lover at the strike of a match. With alluring melodies and a fast-moving pace, Il tabarro sees the great opera composer at the very height of his powers.