*****

The cast of Berlioz Beatrice and Benedict at Mid Wales Opera | Photo: fotoNant/Dafydd Owen

Even the most ardent Berlioz enthusiasts would probably admit that his three operas (four if you include Damnation of Faust) have never quite made it to repertory status. They require special pleading. And not exempt from pleading is the one that comes closest to conventionality: the late, light comedy Beatrice and Benedict adapted from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. So it was a brave thing for the small-scale touring company Mid Wales Opera to take on its winter excursions around the farthest-flung parts of the Principality – visiting places like Aberdovey, Aberdare, Builth Wells and Criccieth that hardly get the chance to see a mainstream Madam Butterfly or Figaro, still less an operatic rarity.

But then, this little company is seriously enterprising. Run effectively by just two people – Music Director Jonathan Lyness and Artistic Director Richard Studer – it takes standard-sized works, reduces them down to fit modest spaces on shoestring budgets with tiny orchestras, and somehow ends up with results of disarming style and impact. Which is exactly what it managed with Beatrice and Benedict.

Berlioz famously described this piece as a caprice 'written with the point of a needle', and its featherweight delicacy is the consequence of paring down Shakespeare’s play to its essence: a will they?/won’t they? scenario of two people reluctant to admit they love each other. Much of the peripheral narrative got cast aside. And although Berlioz invented a character of his own to smooth over some of the cuts, he nonetheless left a score that’s fleet of foot and sweeps you elegantly through the story, with sung numbers linked by spoken dialogue.

Mid Wales Opera’s version, though, moved even faster – whittling things down to a cast of six; changing the gender of the authority figure Leonato so he becomes Leonata and can be merged with the servant girl Ursule; shifting the end-of-Act I Nocturne to the beginning of Act II to allow two balanced halves of forty minutes each…and reducing Berlioz’s orchestra to just four players: violin, cello, clarinet, with Lyness himself directing from a keyboard.

Put in those blunt terms, it may sound brutal. But the fact is, it was brilliant: clever, sharp, and done (in English) with finesse as needle-like as Berlioz’s own. As was the execution. The six singers were delightful, capable, negotiating problems opera singers always have with spoken dialogue, and doing so with energy. Monica McGhee and Huw Ynr in the title roles, John Ieuan Jones as Claudio, Lorenza Paz Nieto as Hero, Matthew Stiff as Don Pedro, Stephanie Windsor-Lewis as the gender-fluid Leonata. I liked them all. And I liked too the effortless chic of Richard Studer’s designs which conjured up the spirit of the piece from almost nothing.

Given an achievement of this order, you might think that Mid Wales Opera would be showered with reward by those who rule Welsh cultural life. But no. Arts Council Wales has just announced that it will cut to zero all MWO’s funding as from next year – which means that the company’s Spring 2024 tour could well be its last.

How the Council have reached this decision is beyond me – as it’s beyond the comprehension of the many in Wales for whom MWO is their only contact with live opera. Here was a company doing what government constantly trumpets in its ‘levelling up’ agendas, taking the arts on the road, to people nowhere near big cities, and fulfilling a vital ambassadorial role with panache, imagination, distinction. You can only conclude that the petty bureaucrats of Arts Council Wales don’t regard opera as a significant activity. And if that’s the case, they need to learn otherwise. MWO can’t be allowed to die without a fight; and there are plenty of Welsh opera-lovers prepared to make one.

midwalesopera.co.uk