Wales Millenium Centre 🎶🎹🏛

A very Welsh building

The area along the shores of Cardiff Bay is being gradually regenerated and is featuring some important new buildings, like the Wales Millenium Centre (WMC) and the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, that give the quarter a very appealing feeling. The WMC has been designed and built to express an immediately recognisable “Welshness” with building materials sourced from different parts of Wales and a gigantic inscription on the façade in Welsh and in English. The words of the inscriptions are by Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis and translate as Creating Truth Like Glass From Inspiration’s Furnace in Welsh and In these stones horizons sing.

The inauguration events

The building was officially opened on the weekend of the 26, 27 and 28 November 2004 with a series of events organised by singer Bryn Terfel, culminating on the last day with the unveiling of a commemorative plaque by the Queen and an inaugural show featuring many international artists, including the Welsh National Opera, the Kirov Ballet and the Cirque Eloize. The inauguration was also an opportunity to showcase the building and its construction to visitors as this is an architectural marvel to look at in details.

The Welsh National Opera

The main institution hosted within the Millenium Centre in the Welsh National Opera, which moved its operational teams to this new permanent base in 2004. Before then the company did not have a base in Cardiff, although performances were regularly hosted at the New Theatre since 1952. Gradually the opera company made its moves from an amateur organisation to a fully professional one with a full season of opera productions all year round. By now the opera house is considered one of the finest in Europe and its world class programme attracts opera fans from all ove r the world.