Founded in 1946 and so celebrating a milestone birthday, the year ahead is set to be a big one for Welsh National Opera, with a slate of upcoming productions to suit. James Ellis paid a visit to WNO’s Cardiff Bay HQ to speak to the company’s joint CEOs, Adele Thomas & Sarah Crabtree.
Welsh National Opera is celebrating its 80th year. What does the company mean to you?
Sarah Crabtree: The first point I realised opera was a thing that existed was when my partner went to a WNO production of Madama Butterfly in Oxford – early 90s, I think. Opera and I went in completely separate directions… somehow I find myself back here doing this job.
I am incredibly grateful to WNO: we arrived at quite a difficult point in the life cycle of the company, and they’ve welcomed Adele and I with open arms. It was a really hard time, and they could have been sceptical. The people of WNO – and the people of Wales – have gone, “Come in! Join us!” My kids, if you were to ask them would say they are Welsh, and I already feel like that after a year here.
This is a really special company and there is a lot to fight for. WNO has an extraordinary history and we are now charged with making sure that not only does it survive, but that it’s brilliant, vibrant, compelling and exciting. Not just WNO, but opera as an artform.
Adele Thomas: Well, I’m the first Welsh leader of the company – which is absolutely mad! I feel like I’ve been handed something unbelievably fragile, precious and extraordinary. It’s more meaningful than I have the words to express. I’m from Port Talbot; I didn’t go to the opera as a child, came from a very working-class background. I saw my first opera when Richard Jones’ Wozzeck premiered here in 2005, and it was a production that didn’t just make me want to make opera, it made me want to be an artist. It really unlocked something in me – it’s still my favourite production of anything I’ve ever seen – so this company is the start of everything for me.
Can you tell us more about the 2026/2027 seasons?
Adele: We’re really excited. It’s terrifying and fantastic that in the first week we started, nothing was planned for this season we’re in right now [spring 2026]. That was only a year ago – in opera terms, it’s like planning tomorrow. We just kind of leapt on the opportunity. Lots of other people would have to wait years before they could start to promote the work they want to make with a company.
The season is an attempt to refine an aesthetic. There’s a history of Welsh National Opera making cutting edge, avant-garde European opera with visionary theatre makers. That’s something we want to see a return to. An aesthetic that’s contemporary, beautiful, accessible and feels like it sits on the cutting edge of art in the world today.
We’re essentially doing four shows in the season, which is the calling card for the next 80 years. We were having to work on a limited budget – this new season will be the first break-even. But a small budget is no barrier to creativity! We’re doing La Bohème, originally a Glyndebourne production by the Dutch director Floris Visser. I think our audiences are going to lose their minds over this one.
Sarah: The second production in our autumn season is Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex – we’re making these two with English National Opera. This Bluebeard is a stunning piece of theatre with director Joe Hill-Gibbins, complemented with music from Hildegard von Bingen; between the work they shall weave together voices for Bluebeard’s wives. WNO makes work that is big-scale grand opera, it’s part of our DNA. Full orchestra for the Bluebeard! Full chorus! If we are going to make work on the smaller scale or mid-scale, that has to stand against the big stuff. Full force.
Adele: There is also The Anonymous Lover by Joseph Bologne, also known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges. This is part of the smaller-scale work, going to venues new and old to us across Wales and England. [Bologne] was an amazing guy. Total polymath. Mentor to Mozart, great fencer, fab violinist. The piece is just gorgeous. Fizzy, beautiful, funny. It’s going to be taken on by Omar Elerian – one of the most formally inventive directors working, Italian-Palestinian. It’s going to be a really interesting deconstruction of what 18th-century opera can be.
Alongside that, we’re taking a piece for children and young people: Jason And The Argonauts. It’s important to mesh with the youngest opera audience in a form that matters to them. And the last piece in our season is our first ever Welsh-language commission, Hedd Wyn: Eisteddfod Atomig. We’re making it with Theatr Cymru, Steven McNeff and Gruff Rhys. Gruff has an amazing history as a songwriter and poet – of course he’d make a brilliant librettist for opera.
What made you want to go into directing and production?
Adele: I think being a director is a mental health condition, an illness. You wake up in the morning and you say “I have to tell this story!” When I was younger I used to be so obsessed with so many different artforms. My dad had two books – one on Max Ernst, one on Magritte – and I used to look at them over and over again. I learned the clarinet, I did some singing. clubbing, going to gigs; lots of my friends were in bands.
Everyone on our estate mysteriously ended up with free cable, which probably fell off the back of a lorry, and MTV was a gateway to a whole new universe. I can still think of every music video from 1985 to 1998. They used to have interviews with Andy Warhol, fashion designers. At uni, I got the chance to direct a play – I think 25 people had dropped out from directing it – and at that moment, everything came together. I had found what I was looking for.
Sarah: Nothing could make me want to go into directing – so many people have asked if I’m tempted; absolutely not! – but my background is in producing, and I fell into that because I thought I wanted to be an actor. I got terrible stagefright – same reason why I couldn’t be a director. I spent years of doing my degree by not doing my degree, running a theatre society; you could pull all the strings and make it happen as an amazing creative endeavour. I think this really set me up to make great theatre and opera. Producers are also creative individuals in the team, as a sounding board for the audience.
Which WNO production means the most to you?
Adele: That Wozzeck for me…the most foundational thing I’ve ever seen. In the late 90s, I was really into the mod scene and found myself wearing 60s clothes, full makeup, full hair. Theatre in the early 2000s was very tasteful: varying levels of grey, lots of shows at the Royal Court, existential plays about middle-class anxiety. I was like, none of this has any bearing on my life… I am wearing a polka-dot Mary Quant dress. This doesn’t mean anything to me. That’s why the Wozzeck was so special – the colours.
Sarah: So I’m not going to choose a production – I’m going to choose a moment when I realised that this was what we were fighting for. [Adele and I] had been here for four months; we were doing Panig! Attack!! at the New Theatre, celebrating the Welsh National Youth Opera at 20 years. I took my kids – their first WNO experience – and sat there watching these young people onstage, thinking that if we didn’t do something, the opportunity wouldn’t be there for my kids on that stage.
I went backstage after and just could not speak. This is so important! It’s friendship, the collective endeavour, the camaraderie. I watched them as we were talking to them and having finished the show, they were buzzing! We have to make sure this generation and the next generations get the chance. But we’ve got to do something radically different. We can’t expect to do the same things and expecting a different result.
Any music you’re obsessed with at the moment?
Sarah: I could not stop listening to Rosalía’s Lux. Someone in the office, who was new to opera, heard that song and said, “Is this opera?” And I was like, “Yes! It really is!” I’ve been listening to that with a lot of curiosity. Infiltrating the cultural zeitgeist.
Adele: I’m obsessed with The Barber Of Seville because I’m directing it in a couple of years! That’s the biggest thing that’s occupying my brain at the moment. It’s sooo fun. Every day I get obsessed with something musically. I got Still D.R.E. by Dr Dre in my mind the other day. Every time I do a show I have a song that I put on for the right headspace before I start directing. Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain – something about the growing tension is perfect – or Black Gold Of The Sun by Minnie Riperton.
This might be old news already… but what are your thoughts on Timothée Chalamet’s remarks about opera?
Sarah: When this came out, we were unsure to engage with it. I mean, he’s not wrong. He has probably never seen anything that does move him.
Adele: Of course I don’t agree with Chalamet!
Sarah: Yes, we should say that!
Adele: Opera has not made a good case for itself as a vital artform within the wider cultural economy. In Europe, opera is heavily subsided – governments have an obligation – tickets are priced very low, and every city has an opera house. It’s like breathing. in the UK and USA, it’s the domain of the elite. The opera houses in the ascendancy are the country houses; Glyndebourne is exceptional because of the artistic standards, but it’s not just the tickets being expensive, it’s a club mentality.
People do think that opera is exclusive, and that this elitism is part of the package; sadly, there are opera fans who like to gatekeep with its exclusive mentality. We’ve got to find a way to make it part of the everyday, or opera here will become a museum piece.
Welsh National Opera’s spring productions are Blaze Of Glory! (Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Fri 17 Apr; Grand Theatre, Swansea, Thurs 21 + Fri 22 May); The Flying Dutchman (Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Thurs 16 + Sun 19 Apr); and Play Opera Live: Shipwrecked! (Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Sat 18 Apr).
The 2026-27 season is set to feature La Bohème (autumn 2026); Bluebeard’s Castle + Oedipus Rex (autumn 2026); The Anonymous Lover (spring 2027) and Hedd Wyn: Eisteddfod Atomig (summer 2027).
Info: wno.org.uk
words JAMES ELLIS
