Music Theatre Wales: lean, mean and fighting fit at 25 years old

Music Theatre Wales is still going strong after twenty five years. And with its focussed identity, realistic aims and minimal overheads, it's setting an example other arts institutions should follow

Greek by Mark-Anthony Turnage, a Music Theatre Wales production
Greek by Mark-Anthony Turnage, a Music Theatre Wales production Credit: Photo: CLIVE BARDA/ ArenaPAL

“Think opera. Think again.”

This injunction could serve as the motto of Music Theatre Wales, a remarkable little institution which for the last twenty-five years has steadfastly and uncompromisingly presented contemporary operatic work to the highest musical and theatrical standards.

That consistency is a quality one immediately wants to emphasise: virtually all the company’s annual productions have been directed by Michael McCarthy and conducted by Michael Rafferty, with the help of a closely knit but not closed circle of collaborators, and whatever one thinks of the works themselves, it is hard to fault their execution. This is serious stuff by serious people who know what they are doing, and they manage to both explore and innovate without wasting time or money on trendy gimmicks or extravagant stagings.

MTW’s roots lie in Cardiff during the 1980s. It may seem unlikely now, but this was a period when the city enjoyed a brief flowering as a centre of experiment in performance and all sorts of possibilities were suddenly within reach. Under the leadership of Brian McMaster, Welsh National Opera was importing some of the most radical European directors, and groups such as Brith Gof and Moving Being were breaking out of conventional theatres and playing with site-specific and immersive spectacles.

In this richly creative atmosphere, McCarthy and Rafferty inaugurated their MTW partnership with an open-air production of Maxwell Davies’s The Martyrdom of St Magnus, and they have gone on to present stage works, both newly commissioned and already extant, by most of the leading post-war British composers, from Britten, Tippett and Birtwistle to Stuart MacRae and Huw Watkins, as well as an impressive selection of Europeans and Americans.

One special association is with Philip Glass: ever since MTW performed his Fall of the House of Usher in 1989, this celebrated minimalist has favoured the company, and next year it will present the world première of his adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial.

Although still based in Cardiff, MTW is essentially mobile, touring to the Cheltenham, Huddersfield and Buxton Festivals, as well as smaller venues around Wales and elsewhere in England. For some years now, it has also enjoyed a regular London base at the Linbury Studio Theatre inside the Royal Opera House. Between 21 and 26 October it will be in residence here not only for its productions of Salvatore Sciarrino’s The Killing Flower and Turnage’s Greek (which justly won the 2012 UK Theatre Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera), but also for a slap-up silver jubilee party attended by a clutch of modern musical royalty.

What is the secret of MTW’s success? It knows what it is and doesn’t try to be what it isn’t. “We’re about the new, about the living artist, about research and development,” Michael McCarthy told me. “We are about the present and the future of opera, built on the past but always looking forward.”

At the same time it doesn’t have its head in the clouds. It is a lean organisation, with minimal overheads and only two backroom employees. It is fortunate in that its chief sponsor, Arts Council Wales recognises that it cannot aspire to broad public appeal and that its value cannot be measured by mere footfall or box-office takings: “We don’t have a conventional education department, for instance, because it wouldn’t fit with our core mission,” explains McCarthy. “Instead we run a scheme called ‘Make an Aria’, in which composers of the stature of Birtwistle, Weir and Turnage work with postgraduate students through public master classes. It’s a brilliant success.”

Arts Council Wales holds MTW up to its other clients as exemplary in its practice and attitudes, and it has been generous in consequence (its annual grant currently stands at £225k). Yet finding private donors to fill the gaps between subsidy and box office is very hard indeed. “We can’t pretend to provide predictable entertainment: we’re an innovation company – something that’s always different and, we hope, exciting,” says Executive Director Carole Strachan. “But people are understandably reluctant to invest in something which has an entirely unknown outcome.”

Here, then, is a classic case of the necessity and virtue of subsidy: MTW has only been able to maintain its standards and integrity on the bedrock of Arts Council support. Far from making it fat and lazy, this money has kept its life-blood circulating and its organs healthy, allowing it do a job which makes a small but significant contribution to our national cultural life.

MTW shows no sign of running out of steam: McCarthy and Rafferty may have been at the helm for a quarter of a century, but they are still bubbling with fresh ideas – Gerald Barry’s The Intelligence Park and a new piece by the young Portuguese composer Vasco Mendonca are currently being considered.

So on its twenty-fifth birthday, I propose a toast. Think opera, think Music Theatre Wales – and think again.

Music Theatre Wales’ productions of The Killing Flower and Greek are playing at Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, WC2 (020 7978 1744), 21-6 October