This is Welsh National Opera’s big chance. Fifty-nine years after its birth, as the brilliant artistic reputation that it enjoyed in the 1980s falters along with attendances, the company has moved into a new home in the Wales Millennium Centre, a vast cultural emporium at the heart of the redeveloped Cardiff Bay.
Lyric Theatre at Millenium Centre, Cardiff
Prelude to great things
[Daily Telegraph, 12 Feb 05]
Its move to the magnificent Millennium Centre may give Welsh National Opera the boost it needs, says Rupert Christiansen
This is Welsh National Opera's big chance. Fifty-nine years after its birth, as the brilliant artistic reputation that it enjoyed in the 1980s falters along with attendances, the company has moved into a new home in the Wales Millennium Centre, a vast cultural emporium at the heart of the redeveloped Cardiff Bay.
A boost in morale is needed. WNO has endured a number of setbacks in recent seasons: several flops, the unpopular organisational overhaul and the "sudden departure" last summer of the inexperienced young music director Tugan Sokhiev among them. Is the long-serving general director Anthony Freud thinking of moving on (he was shortlisted last year for the top job at New York's Metropolitan Opera)? Can the magnificent facilities of the WMC restore the company's fortunes?