By the time Brian McMaster became General Administrator in 1976, WNO was a fully professional company with a 48-strong professional chorus and its own orchestra. Shortly after McMaster’s appointment, the scenery dock in Cardiff caught fire, and all the sets from the previous thirty years either went up in smoke or were so badly damaged that they were unusable. Other companies rallied round and the season went ahead in a series of makeshift sets. McMaster’s great contribution was to bring in directors from the straight theatre and the Eastern European tradition. Not everyone liked the results, but Harry Kupfer’s production of Elektra (1978) became a major landmark in modern opera production. There was also Järvefelt’s The Magic Flute, Stein’s Otello and Herz’s Madam Butterfly. Even Ruth Berghaus’s Don
Giovanni, which divided the critics, brought a theatrical magic to opera production that had not been seen in Britain before.