The Face in the Mirror brings together composer Lynne Plowman and librettist Martin Riley and is a new commission for Welsh National Opera's Singing Club.  It will be
premiered at the Blakehay Theatre in Weston-Super-Mare before touring to Neath, Gloucester and Cardiff.

Number 28 Crowther Street holds the key to a strange wartime secret.  The burnt-out ruin is the refuge for Mikela, her brother, Cody and a group of friends who encounter the ghost of
a woman trapped in an old mirror; a doorway to one devastating night in the 1940s when she lost the man she loved. As the modern day and the past collide, Mikela and Cody's lives are put in terrible danger.

Lynne Plowman and Martin Riley have worked together to create an opera which incorporates ideas from workshops with the children in the Singing Club. These workshops have included storytelling, singing sessions, puppetry and a lesson in jitterbug moves!

The show will be performed by members of the fifty-strong young opera group of 10 to 14 year olds who meet every Saturday morning to learn singing techniques and drama skills.
As well as appearing in mainscale operas, including WNO's new production of La boheme this summer, Singing Club also gives the young singers the opportunity to perform in concerts and on the Glanfa Stage at Wales Millennium Centre.

Lynne Plowman is an acclaimed composer who won the British Composers Award for Stage Works for her first opera Gwyneth and the Green Knight with libretto by Martin Riley for Music Theatre Wales.  In 2009 she completed an ambitious new score to the classic German Expressionist silent film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari which was performed live by the London Mozart Players alongside screenings of the film. Lynne is bases in Wales and is a Honourary Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama where she also teaches composition.

Martin Riley has worked for many years, writing children's theatre and television. He is a director of Alive and Kicking interactive theatre company and has worked on several projects with Lynne Plowman. They are currently collaborating on a new touring "Pirate" children's opera for Glyndebourne.  Martin has also worked with composer Stephan Deazley and has written for Jackanory, Playbus, Children's Ward, the Worst Witch and Emmerdale.


For more information visit: www.wno.org.uk.