Welsh Youth Opera
Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay

IF OPERA is to thrive and bring in new audiences, then having a youth wing of singers and putting on productions aimed at young people is essential. Welsh National Opera claims it is committed to diversity and ensuring its work is accessible to a wide audience.

Its latest production of Solomon’s Ring and The Very Last Green Thing by the WNO Youth Opera manages to be both entertaining and a great introduction to opera for a younger audience. The youth opera has two cohorts aged 10-14 and 14-18 years of age and both groups combine to bring us 60 minutes of top-class singing and fine acting performances.

Solomon’s Ring is a very short piece that started life as a way of providing more stage time for some of the members of the youth opera who were not as involved with the longer The Very Last Green Thing and helped create the piece themselves.

King Solomon has demanded that he be brought a powerful and magical item and if the courtier fails in the quest he will have his daughter killed.

Although the piece was short it did evoke strong emotions and was very cleverly staged with members of the cast acting as woods and mountains as the quest unfurled.

My two young companions, Skylar aged eight and Behati aged seven, were captivated by The Last Green Thing, which was composed by Cary John Franklin and brought to life by director Rhian Hutchings.

This is set in the future when the Earth is no longer habitable unless wearing masks, breathing apparatus and protective clothing. There is no longer any plant life and a class of schoolchildren are taught lessons by a robot android played by HoWang Yuen. But when the class are taken outside for a lesson they find a time capsule full of items from the past: a pair of trainers, a tape player and a plant.

The production really takes off as one by one the items are taken out of the capsule and one child puts on the trainers and dances and bounces round the stage.

Skylar laughed out loud when the cassette player was switched on and all the cast, including the android teacher, start dancing to the music. Both Skylar and Behati understood what the production was saying about the environment and how the last green thing was the plant in the time capsule which started growing when watered.

They were also delighted when they were handed a packet of wildflower seeds by the cast.

Welsh National Opera deserve our praise for the work they are doing in teaching children to sing and to perform and for enthralling a new audience.

Run ended.