The Welsh National Opera has announced that Adele Thomas and Sarah Crabtree will be jointly taking on the role of General Director and CEO starting this coming January.

Thomas has established herself as a major opera director who has led productions at Glyndebourne, Opernhaus Zürich, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the London Handel Festival, and Northern Ireland Opera. Her “Bazajet” at Irish National Opera and “Berenice” at ROH were both nominated for Best New Opera Production at the Olivier Awards. She will be directing a new Welsh National Opera production of “Rigoletto.”

Meanwhile, Crabtree has been the Creative Producer and head of Linbury Theatre at The Royal Opera House since 2017.

“We are passionate exponents of the power of opera; the impact of the raw, unadulterated voice, its profound liveness and its dedication to scale that enables us to tell the great stories of our time,” Thomas and Crabtree said in a joint statement. “WNO holds a unique position within opera: the Company sprung out of the national passion for exceptional singing. We will aim to lead the Company to a place where it stands with confidence and pride alongside the finest international houses and companies as an innovative, accessible and highly visible powerhouse of opera. We want to bring a new, diverse audience to opera in Wales and beyond, whilst respecting and nurturing WNO’s existing loyal audience. We have a shared commitment to transformational change and a drive to nurture the artform of opera to its next stage of development, particularly given the challenges that the industry has faced in recent years. At the heart of our philosophy, is a deeply held belief in the democratic spirit in which WNO was founded and still holds today: that opera is for everyone.”