While never ignoring the popular repertoire – including coming up with such striking productions as Lucian Pintilie’s Carmen, set in a circus ring – WNO continued to explore interesting and unusual repertoire. Berg’s Lulu had been given its first British staging as was Martinu°’s The Greek Passion. Handel’s Rodelinda was performed at a time when most Handel operas were not considered to be stageable. There was a surge of interest in Janácˇek thanks to the co-productions with Scottish Opera. Even the operatic peaks of a Ring Cycle were scaled
under the baton of Richard Armstrong.

Forty years after it first took to the stage as an enthusiastic amateur company, Welsh National Opera was rightly being hailed as
the most inventive, most imaginative and most adventurous of all the British opera companies.