See Michael McCarthy's latest blog at www.musictheatrewales.org.uk on their Make an Aria project for emerging composers and WRITERS.

The latest outing of Make an Aria was hosted by the Music Faculty at the University of Oxford. We had some great participants and an excellent masterclass.

For all you writers out there - don't forget that opera is also a vital, exciting and important outlet for dramatic writers and we need you - in collaboration with composers of course!

Current writers creating work for MTW are Christopher Hampton (The Trial - based on Kafka, music by Philip Glass) and Louise Welsh (creating a new opera inspired by a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson with composer Stuart MacRae). This is the team that won the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Opera in 2013 with MTW. Also, watch out for the new book by Louise - about to be launched in Glasgow: A Lovely Way to Burn (sounds typically macabre!)

The opera we will perform in 2016 is a setting of the play The Golden Dragon by the exciting German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig. Check him out. This play has been successfully performed across Europe, in the UK and USA.