LAND SEA SKY TRILOGY
2005  Redflight Barcud
2006  Dolffin
2007  Wild Cat, with all 3 opera's coming together as the Land Sea Sky Trilogy

Across the 3-year project there were 77 performances, 1462 young participants, 14115 audience members.

Summary  The Land, Sea, Sky Trilogy - a trilogy of bilingual chamber operas exploring themes of animal conservation.  Each opera was

• Performed by approximately 30 children aged 8-11, professional opera singers and instrumentalists
• Involved school teachers and training teachers in up to 6 months of training and mentoring at WNO, leaving a significant skills legacy in the communities it reached 
• Involved the Welsh and English-speaking schools that took part in school-wide, cross-curriculum exploration of the themes of each opera

Commission  The Trilogy was commissioned with the objective of making opera meaningful to isolated rural communities, and to share special elements of welsh life with inner city communities in England. To achieve this WNO Max commissioned operas in English and Welsh - the languages that rural bi-lingual Welsh communities speak, addressed animal conservation and environment issues that rural Wales deeply cares about, and placed young singers at the heart of the musical and dramatic storytelling. The result was a musical, educational experience that touched children, their peers, their parents, their schools, the wider community, and WNO's own understanding of what opera can be.

Mentoring and skills  Across the project 80 participating teachers and 42 training teachers came to WNO for a 2 day opera residency with the WNO MAX creative team, to be immersed into the world of the opera, and develop skills for leading and shaping the project within their school. The emphasis was on a mentoring relationship between the WNO team and the teachers; working together to indentify teaching and rehearsal techniques, as well as cross curriculum, school wide activities. There was a focus on singing, and developing the confidence to teach complex songs in the classroom setting. Over the following months teachers rehearsed their young people and the WNO vocal animator and director made visits to mentor the process. The trainee teachers devised workshops for the KS1 and KS2 pupils in each school to engage them with opera. The WNO production team came together with the young people for 2 days for final rehearsals; they always heard the opera's songs sung in the playgrounds as they arrived.

Partnership  WNO involved each school in a marketing and PR collaboration to ensure that a true community audience attended the performance event. Schools created posters and press releases and proudly encouraged everyone within their community to come along. As the project grew and arts venues became committed partners , schools and their local venue worked together with WNO to market and promote the performances. Every performance in every venue was full; matinee audiences of local primary school children, in the evening audiences of families and WNO opera fans mixed happily! Every school child aged 9 - 11 in Hay on Wye sang in Dolffin at the festival and it was the largest audience of local people that had attended any event in the festival's history. Standing on the playing field of Cilycwm for Redflight Barcud in 2005 every member of the community could be seen closing their front doors to walk up to the 'opera tent', and by 2007 the community had reclaimed an area of the forest for the 'opera tent' for Wild Cat. At Galeri, a new venue establishing itself in Caernarfon, performances of Redflight and Wild Cat have opened the door to new audiences.

'Words cannot begin to describe the feelings of pride watching the performance of Wild Cat.... I am now at 11:00am on the Tuesday after the performance, slightly tired of opening the door to parents who watched the performances on Friday just saying how fantastic it was. The whole process is something these children and families will remember for the rest of their lives. I really do not think that you are aware of how powerful this sort of partnership is.' Ian Roberts, Abermorddu School, Mold

Evaluation  Throughout the project there was a continuous evaluation process, conducted through letters and interviews, which fed into the final evaluation film in 2007.

The Land, Sea, Sky Trilogy reveals that through a targeted commissioning process, which takes the empowerment of the community at every level as its highest value, it is possible to make Opera as an art form connect with wholly new audiences. Through the Trilogy children gained confidence and skills, rural and inner city communities went to the opera and were connected to WNO a national arts organisation, venues welcomed new audiences and all felt themselves to have been listened to and valued. To this day, children in schools across Wales, Bristol, Liverpool and Birmingham are singing in choirs that otherwise would not have existed.

'This opera, and the decision to perform it in an isolated rural community, has brought the art form to those who have never experienced it before. It has implanted some new paradigms about opera: that it can be light and easily understood; it can be fun; and it can be meaningful. 'Redflight Barcud' was all of these things and has already brought to some children the awareness of a much broader horizons than they've been aware of hitherto, focused, as are their families, on farming.' Ray Noyes, Cil-y-Cwm Community Association.