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Wales Millennium Centre

Welsh National Opera - Peter Grimes, The Marriage of Figaro

Overview Practicalities Testimonials

Section:

Tour highlights

The Welsh National Opera in its home theatre, the acoustically and architecturally excellent Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff.
Excursions and talks with Simon Rees, writer, lecturer and former dramaturg of WNO.
Stay at a 5-star hotel 15 minutes walk from the opera house, and see some of the highlights of Cardiff’s arts and heritage.

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.

Practicalities

Two sharing: £1,260. Single occupancy: £1,530.

Top category tickets for two performances; hotel accommodation as described below; breakfasts; two dinners with wine, water, coffee; travel by private coach and river boat; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; the services of the lecturer and tour manager.

Voco St David’s Hotel & Spa, Cardiff. This is a striking building on the waterfront at Cardiff Bay, 15 minutes on foot from the opera house. The AA gives it a 5-star rating, rooms are pleasingly contemporary in design. Single rooms are doubles for sole use.

There is quite a lot of walking on this tour. A good level of fitness is necessary. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and
stair-climbing.

Between 10 and 22 participants.

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