Welsh National Opera

Welsh National Opera (WNO) is a touring opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO now tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it performs over 120 main scale operas. In Cardiff, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Llandudno, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Plymouth, Southampton and Swansea, they regularly perform to over 150,000 people. Once every two years they perform a major season of opera in London. Although productions were initially sung in English translation, from the 1970s onwards, operas were increasingly sung in the original languages; not only Italian, German and French, but also Russian and Czech. Surtitles were also provided. The Company has always provided a mix of traditional and less-well-known operas, including those of Alban Berg, Richard Strauss, Leos Janacek and Benjamin Britten. In 2004 the Company acquired its first ever permanent home in Cardiff in the new Wales Millennium Centre, a new performing arts centre in... full article at wikipedia