Mid Wales Opera is facing an uncertain future after losing an appeal for the Arts Council of Wales to reconsider cutting the organisation’s funding.

As the opera company wraps up its tour of Berlioz’s ‘Beatrice and Benedict’, the company’s chair has appealed for donations to ensure the company can continue its work until the end of 2024.

Last month the company was left “deeply disappointed” as its decades long funding from the Arts Council of Wales was pulled and despite launching an appeal against the decision, the verdict has been upheld.

Chair of the board Gareth Williams said: “Audiences across Wales and the Marches from Abergavenny to Holyhead and from Fishguard to Mold have expressed delight with Mid Wales Opera’s witty and joyful ‘Beatrice and Benedict’, which closed with a captivating performance in Ludlow’s Assembly Rooms on Saturday night.

READ MORE: Powys' Hafren Theatre and Mid Wales Opera arts funding cut

“They have echoed the view of The Guardian’s Rian Evans that ‘Such a slick staging, with artistic values paramount, is delightful' and it could not underline more emphatically the sheer incomprehensibility of the Arts Council of Wales’s recent decision to cut this company’s funding completely.”

The company said that their focus is now on their future, such as the first night of a much-anticipated new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, in a new orchestral version by their Music Director, Jonathan Lyness.

However, the 35-year-old opera company added that beyond that, their future remains very uncertain.

Get in touch

Share your views on this story by sending a letter to the editor. To get in touch email news@countytimes.co.uk, or fill in the form on this section of our website.

Mr Williams added: “Our appeal against the Arts Council Wales’ decision to end our funding from April 2024 has been dismissed, despite an admission that their appraisal seriously misrepresented the way in which we pay our artists, and copious evidence of the enormous gap which the decision will leave both for audiences and for the career development of Welsh singers and musicians.

“Nevertheless, we sincerely hope that we will be able to undertake a new SmallStages tour next autumn, as well as a schools’ residency in the early summer.

“While our accumulated reserves, together with the generosity of ‘Beatrice and Benedict’ audiences who donated more than £3,000, should take us most of the way towards this, additional financial support from our friends and well-wishers needed to ensure we can do so.”

The company added that anyone wishing to support the opera can do so online or by sending a cheque to Mid Wales Opera, Bryn Wgan, Caersws, SY17 5QU.