OPRA Cymru opera in Welsh, with music by Gareth Glyn, about the 1936 arson of the RAF bombing school at Penrhos.
OPRA Cymru bring Fflamau Penyberth to Taliesin Arts Centre on Thursday 26 November, part of a tour that opens at Neuadd Dwyfor in Pwllheli on 19 November and closes there on 5 December. It's a Welsh-language opera, and if you're not fluent, there's Sibrwd caption translation available, so you can follow the story as it goes.
The title, Fflamau Penyberth, means Flames of Penyberth, and it turns a piece of political history into music. The story goes back to the night of 8 September 1936, when DJ Williams, the poet and dramatist Saunders Lewis, and the Baptist minister Lewis Valentine set fire to an RAF bombing school at RAF Penrhos on the Llŷn Peninsula, then handed themselves in at the nearest police station. Williams was an English teacher at Fishguard grammar school and had helped found Plaid Cymru in 1925. A jury at Caernarfon Assizes failed to agree a verdict that October, and the three were sentenced to nine months at Wormwood Scrubs, where they emerged as heroes — around 15,000 people turned out to welcome them back in Caernarfon. The farmhouse at Penyberth, home to generations of patrons of Welsh poets, had been demolished to make way for the airfield.
This production marks the ninetieth anniversary of that night. The music is by Gareth Glyn, with a libretto by Patrick Young, written with the author and historian Arwel Vittle. The leading roles are taken by tenor Robyn Lyn Evans and baritones Emyr Wyn Jones and Robin Gruffudd Hughes.
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It runs for two hours, starting at 7:30pm. Tickets are £20 full price, with under-26s and students paying £15.
