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’.

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.

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.

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.

MWO’s SmallStages romps onto stage with a radical reworking of The Beggar’s Opera – Mrs Peachum’s Guide to Love and Marriage. Join Mrs Peachum and her daughter Polly in a rumbustious tragicomic tale of love, loyalty and London gin. MWO are delighted to premiere this new one act opera, adapted by Richard Studer, in a new musical version by Jonathan Lyness, accompanied by MWO’s SmallStages Ensemble of four musicians and starring Northern Irish mezzo Carolyn Dobbin as Mrs Peachum and Welsh soprano Alys Mererid Roberts as her feckless daughter.

Autumn 2018 saw MWO back on the road with the company’s second SmallStages tour, Ravel’s exhilarating one-act bedroom farce, A Spanish Hour (L’heure espagnole). First performed in Paris in 1911, L’heure espagnole is set in a clock shop in Toledo, central Spain. It follows the fortunes of Torquemada, the hardworking clockmaker, as, during the course of one hot afternoon, his young wife Concepción negotiates her way through her collection of ridiculous lovers. Ravel’s music is bursting with hummable melodies, lively habanera dances and other Spanish folk song elements to get audiences buzzing.