Nation.Cymru announces its latest addition to the culture team

We are delighted to announce that we will be deepening our Welsh cultural coverage on Nation.Cymru with the appointment of opera critic David Lloyd. David will be familiar to our readers from his book reviews and very successful series of autobiographical pieces.

Here, Jon Gower found out more about his passion for opera, beginning with David’s first experiences:

It was at the New Theatre in Cardiff, part of a WNO season when I was around 19 years old. I’d gone on my own but I wasn’t sure about it at all. My Calvinistic Methodist godmother kept saying I should go. She was austere, unbending but opera unlocked a warmth in her. In the end I made my own decision and WNO drew me in. I was hooked and saw four or five operas (the season was longer in those days). La Boheme was the first I think – viewed from the cheapest seats in the gods, high in the upper circle.

My valleys-raised godmother was housekeeper to Welsh National Opera’s founder Idloes Owen and his wife. Idloes had died by the time I started visiting my godmother Maud and Mrs Idloes Owen in Llandaff in the 1950s but they talked a lot about opera and the front room had a grand piano.

What have been the WNO highlights over the years?

So many really. Madam Butterfly; Nabucco with its great choral masterpiece, the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”; Fidelio, Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and many more, including some radical productions by East German directors which caused a stir, not to mention a few heart palpitations amongst traditionalists.

I have to say that last season’s Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten was one of the greatest moments for me. And the previous year’s Death In Venice, Britten’s final opera, presented in acrobatic collaboration with No Fit State Circus which was both visually stunning and haunting.

What have been the hallmarks of the company, differentiating them from others?

It has been part of the DNA of Wales. It speaks to the heart of Welsh musical life and was born out the ruins of the Second World War. I think that is important, that it inspired the Welsh nation after so much adversity. Over the decades it’s nurtured so much Welsh singing talent that has gone on to grace the stages of the world’s great opera houses.

How has the Welshness best been expressed? 

For me it’s through the chorus. I get emotional whenever I hear them. It’s like they embody the great Welsh choral tradition which is rooted in so many different parts of Wales including the former mining communities.

And their singing evokes hiraeth in me – that elusive sense of longing, Wherever I am the company and its orchestra and singers make me proud to be Welsh. They’ve been through a lot but WNO endures.

What appeals to you about opera as an art form?

Its ability to feed the soul and calm the mind. Its capacity to inspire.

How important is scale…and spectacle? 

I’m equally at home with an opera like Aida or something more intimate like Death in Venice. 

If you could take one opera to listen to on a desert island what would it be and why?

It’s one specific piece, being the trio from Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. 

Who would be singing? 

Going back to my early WNO days, it would the Blackwood-born soprano Margaret Price and the baritone Thomas Allen, who made his debut with WNO in 1969 as D’Obigny in Verdi’s La Traviata, to name just two outstanding artists who are examples of world class singers who shared their gifts with WNO.

You’ve been a faithful member of WNO’s audience over the years. How has opera changed?

I genuinely believe it’s more accessible and the education outreach is a key part of this. More broadly opera companies like WNO have had to refocus, rethink and hold onto their imaginative vision and still nurture talent in the face of funding cuts. I still believe that opera will endure and renew.