MEDIATHEK

Y Tŵr was the first ever opera in the language of Welsh written for professional performers. MTW had long wanted to create a new work in Welsh but we had to wait until we had a composer we believed was capable of creating an original work that would stand alongside our international repertoire, as well as a writer and a subject. MTW invited Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, the National Theatre of Wales in Welsh, to join us as co-producers.
 
 Y Tŵr explores the extremes of human emotion experienced by two lovers over the course of a lifetime. It is abundant in the depth and intensity of feeling that opera demands. Y Tŵr is at once an intimate story of life’s challenges and expectations, and the same time a metaphor for any male-female relationship with all its complexities and paradox. Its dual nature, personal and universal, particular and timeless, lends itself naturally to opera. The tension that drives the original play is that between fantasy and reality; between what is and what might have been.
 
 Scored for just two singers and 12 instrumentalists the opera follows a male-female relationship from young love, through dissilusioned middle-age to an acceptance of end of life, with one Act for each period, requiring virtuosic stage performances and visual realisation.