Welsh National Opera - Peter Grimes, The Marriage of Figaro

In its programming and productions WNO strives to combine adventurousness with accessibility, and commitment to developing new audiences with musical and dramatic integrity. The company punches far above its weight and has created one of the most admired centres of operatic excellence in Europe. 

In 2004 WNO moved into their current home, the Wales Millennium Centre. The architectural brief was to build something ‘unmistakably Welsh and internationally outstanding.’ The winning firm, Percy Thomas, came up with a monumental yet accessible structure of slate, glass, steel and timber built to withstand the lashings of the elements on its coastal location.

Mozart wrote his sparkling, satirical comic opera The Marriage of Figaro based on the revolutionary play by Beaumarchais which had been banned by the Austrian court. Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, himself something of a rebel, wrote a libretto that is full of wit and emotion, showing Figaro’s struggles as he tries to protect his fiancée Susanna from being seduced by his employer Count Almaviva on the eve of his wedding. In the end, Susanna is much more effective than Figaro in thwarting the Count and supporting the Countess, his unhappy wife.

Benjamin Britten took his inspiration for his first major opera, Peter Grimes, from a poem by the Suffolk poet George Crabbe. Crabbe’s tale of a sadistic fisherman who bullies and mistreats the boys who work for him is set in Britten’s own home of Aldeburgh, where the whole community is horrified by Grimes’s misdeeds and cruelty. Grimes is forced to face the consequence of his actions when the boy dies, and the village turns on him to execute justice.