Mid Wales Opera: Ballades, Songs and Arias for a Summer’s Evening
Founded in 1988, Mid Wales Opera has played a critical role in the performing arts sector in Wales for almost forty years. With fully staged, acclaimed touring opera productions, together with community and school productions, educational workshops, concerts and recitals, no other company has regularly produced as diverse a body of operatic work, with as great a geographic reach, across Wales. In all of their work, the company’s aim has been to build audiences for the future, to demystify something that is mistakenly regarded as difficult, and to demonstrate that opera, with its great stories and wonderful music, can be a meaningful, uplifting and life-affirming experience for everyone, of every age and background.
For their debut appearance at Church Stretton Festival, MWO present three singers and three instrumentalists in a wide-ranging and eclectic range of music, from Mozart and Puccini to lesser-known operatic treats by Dvořák, Korngold and Rimsky-Korsakov. Their programme includes French classics by Georges Bizet and Reynaldo Hahn, operetta by J Strauss and Lehar, art songs from Germany and Russia, folksongs from England and Wales, a tribute to Benjamin Britten who died fifty years ago, and a host of well-known ballades and unusual extracts from musical revues. And in addition, MWO include a classic re-telling of the story of Ferdinand the Bull to complete an evening that promises something for everyone and a lot more besides.
We are thrilled to be hosting this opera company – read on to discover more about the excellent musicians lined up for our enjoyment…
Galina Averina – Soprano
Galina Averina studied at the Royal College of Music. Her many recent roles include a critically acclaimed Magda in La rondine (Opera North), Rooker in Giant (Linbury Theatre/ROH), Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (Würzburg Mozartfest/Les Talens Lyriques; also for Opera Project), Brigitta in Iolanta (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kirill Karabits), Die Aufseherin in Elektra (Opéra de Metz), Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Adina in L’elisir d’amore (Wild Arts), Stratonica in La forza dell’amor paterno and Pasiphaë in Raising Icarus (Barber Institute), Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus (IF Opera), Marzelline in Fidelio (Garsington), the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro (West Green House, Opera Project) and Alice Ford in Falstaff (West Green House). For MWO, Pamina in The Magic Flute, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro and Mimi in La Bohème.
Peter Van Hulle – Tenor
Peter Van Hulle studied at Leeds University, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the National Opera Studio. Recent engagements include Aschenbach in Death in Venice (Staatsoper Stuttgart; WNO), the Butcher in David Fennessy’s Pass the Spoon (Opera North), Goro in Madama Butterfly (Irish National Opera) and Hotel Porter in Death in Venice (WNO; La Scala, La Monnaie and ENO). Peter’s many other roles include Valzacchi in Der Rosenkavalier (Irish National Opera), Parpignol/Death in La Bohème (Glyndebourne), Pang in Turandot, Snout in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Der Narr in Wozzeck (all ENO), and Rector in Peter Grimes, Schoolmaster in The Cunning Little Vixen and Monostatos in The Magic Flute (all Scottish Opera). For MWO, Torquemada in Ravel’s L’heure espagnole.
Samuel Pantcheff – Baritone
Samuel Pantcheff is a graduate of the Opera Course at the Royal Academy of Music, a former Britten-Pears Young Artist, and a former young artist and member of the solo ensemble at the Salzburger Landestheater. Appearances include Miles in Anthropocene, Ibn Hakia in Iolanta, Papageno in The Magic Flute, Harlekin in Ariadne auf Naxos, Joseph Pitt in Angels in America (Salzburger Landestheater); Mann in Zaïde/Adama (Theater Aachen); Giuseppe in The Gondoliers, Baritone soloist in What Dreams May Come (English Touring Opera); Prince Yamadori in Madama Butterfly (CBSO, Diva Opera); Pulcino in BambinO (Scottish Opera); Juan in Juliana (Nova Music Opera); and Eight Songs for a Mad King (Grimeborn Festival, Saint Petersburg Philharmonia). For MWO, Sam in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti.
Elenid Owen – Violin
Elenid was, for 24 years, a member of the Paris-based Ludwig String Quartet, giving over 1,500 concerts and master classes worldwide and recording 20 CDs for Naxos, Naïve and Universal labels. She was made “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres” by the French Ministry for Culture for her contribution to music in France. Wanting to ensure a Welsh education for her children, she and her family came back to Wales to settle in 2014. Principal violinist with Ensemble Cymru and with MWO, she now enjoys freelancing with different ensembles and teaches violin performance and chamber music at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff.
Alis Huws – Harp
Former Official Royal Harpist (2019-2024), Alis is an exclusive Decca Classics recording artist. Career highlights so far include appearing as a soloist at Classic FM Live in the Royal Albert Hall, recording on the Gramophone Award Nominated album – Britten’s Canticles – with tenor James Way, and performing at HM King Charles III’s coronation at Westminster Abbey. She was named on Classic FM’s Rising Stars list for 2024 and was recently made an honorary associate of RWCMD, her alma mater. She will premiere a newly commissioned harp concerto by Cameron Biles-Liddell with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Autumn 2026.
Jonathan Lyness – Piano
Born in London, Jonathan read music at Bristol University and later studied conducting with George Hurst. He is Music Director of Mid Wales Opera, Ludlow Orchestra and Opera Project which he co-founded in 1993, and he is Artistic Associate of Ensemble Cymru. He has conducted for many years at Longborough Festival Opera and West Green House Opera. Most recently for MWO: Dido and Aeneas, La Bohème, Macbeth and Hansel and Gretel. His many reduced orchestrations of operas are performed extensively worldwide, his arrangement of Walton’s The Bear is published by OUP (and was filmed by Opera Holland Park) and his arrangement of Montsalvatge’s El Gato con botas is published by Peermusic Classical, NY.
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