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The interiors of churches were often more elaborate before the Reformation , with highly decorated sacrament houses , like the ones surviving at Deskford and Kinkell . The carvings at Rosslyn Chapel , created in the mid @-@ fifteenth century , elaborately depicting the progression of the seven deadly sins , are considered some of the finest in the Gothic style . Monumental effigies began to appear in churches from the thirteenth century and they were usually fully coloured and gilded . Many were founders and patrons of churches and chapels , including members of the clergy , knights and often their wives . In contrast to England , where the fashion for stone @-@ carved monuments gave way to brass etchings , they continued to be produced until the end of the Medieval period , with the largest group dating from the fifteenth century , including the very elaborate Douglas tombs in the town of Douglas . Sometimes the best continental artists were employed , as for Robert I 's elaborate tomb in Dunfermline Abbey , which was made in his lifetime by the Parisian sculptor Thomas of Chartres , but of which only fragments now survive . The greatest group of surviving sculpture from this period are from the West Highlands , beginning in the fourteenth century on Iona under the patronage of the Lordship of the Isles and continuing until the Reformation . Common motifs were ships , swords , harps and Romanesque vine leaf tracery with Celtic elements .
= = = Decorative arts = = =
Survivals from late Medieval church fittings and objects in Scotland are exceptionally rare even compared to those from comparable areas like England or Norway , probably because of the thoroughness of their destruction in the Scottish Reformation . The Scottish elite and church now participated in a culture stretching across Europe , and many objects that do survive are imported , such as Limoges enamels . It is often difficult to decide the country of creation of others , as work in international styles was produced in Scotland , along with pieces retaining more distinctive local styles .
Two secular small chests with carved whalebone panels and metal fittings illustrate some aspects of the Scottish arts . The Eglington and Fife Caskets are very similar and were probably made by the same workshop around 1500 , as boxes for valuables such as jewellery or documents . The overall form of the caskets follows French examples , and the locks and metal bands are decorated in Gothic style with " simple decorations of fleurons and debased egg and dart " while the whalebone panels are carved in relief with a late form of Insular interwoven strapwork characteristic of late Medieval West Scotland .
Key examples of native craftsmanship on items include the Bute mazer , the earliest surviving drinking cup of its type , made of maple @-@ wood and with elaborate silver @-@ gilt ornamentation , dated to around 1320 . The Savernake Horn was probably made for the earl of Moray in the fourteenth century and looted by the English in the mid @-@ sixteenth century . A few significant reliquaries survive from West Scotland , examples of the habit of the Celtic church of treating the possessions rather than the bones of saints as relics . As in Irish examples these were partly reworked and elaborated at intervals over a long period . These are St Fillan 's Crozier and its " Coigreach " or reliquary , between them with elements from each century from the eleventh to the fifteenth , the Guthrie Bell Shrine , Iona , twelfth to fifteenth century , and the Kilmichael Glassary Bell Shrine , Argyll , mid @-@ twelfth century . The Skye Chess piece is a single elaborate piece in carved walrus ivory , with two warriors carrying heraldic shields in a framework of openwork vegetation . It is thought to be Scottish , of the mid @-@ thirteenth century , with aspects similar to both English and Norwegian pieces .
One of the largest groups of surviving works of art are the seal matrices that appear to have entered Scottish usage with feudalism in the reign of David I , beginning at the royal court and among his Anglo @-@ Norman vassals and then by about 1250 they began to spread to the Gaelicised areas of the country . They would be made compulsory for barons of the king in a statute of 1401 and seal matrices show very high standards of skill and artistry . Examples of items that were probably the work of continental artists include the delicate hanging lamp in St. John 's Kirk in Perth , the vestments and hangings in Holyrood and the Medieval maces of the Universities of St Andrews and Glasgow .
= = = Illumination and painting = = =
Manuscript illumination continued into the late Middle Ages , moving from elaborate gospels to charters , like that confirming the rights of Kelso Abbey from 1159 . Very little painting from Scottish churches survives . There is only one surviving Doom painting in Scotland , at Guthrie near Arbroath , which may have been painted by the same artist as the elaborate crucifixion and other paintings at Foulis Easter , eighteen miles away . As in England , the monarchy may have had model portraits of royalty used for copies and reproductions , but the versions of native royal portraits that survive are generally crude by continental standards . Much more impressive are the works or artists imported from the continent , particularly the Netherlands , generally considered the centre of painting in the Northern Renaissance . The products of these connections included a fine portrait of William Elphinstone , Bishop of Aberdeen ( 1488 – 1514 ) ; the images of St Catherine and St John brought to Dunkeld ; Hugo van Der Goes 's altarpiece for the Trinity College Church in Edinburgh , commissioned by James III , and the work after which the Flemish Master of James IV of Scotland is named . There are also a relatively large number of elaborate devotional books from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries , usually produced in the Low Countries and France for Scottish patrons , including the prayer book commissioned by Robert Blackadder , Bishop of Glasgow , between 1484 and 1492 and the Flemish illustrated book of hours , known as the Hours of James IV of Scotland , given by James IV to Margaret Tudor and described as " perhaps the finest medieval manuscript to have been commissioned for Scottish use " .
= Humpty Dumpty =
Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme , probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English @-@ speaking world . He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg , though he is not explicitly described so . The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth @-@ century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott 's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs . Its origins are obscure and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings .
The character of Humpty Dumpty was popularised in the United States by actor George L. Fox ( 1825 – 77 ) . As a character and literary allusion , he has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture , particularly Lewis Carroll 's Through the Looking @-@ Glass ( 1872 ) . The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026 .
= = Lyrics and melody = =
The rhyme is one of the best known and most popular in the English language . The most common modern text is :
It is a single quatrain with external rhymes that follow the pattern of AABB and with a trochaic metre , which is common in nursery rhymes . The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded by composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs ( London , 1870 ) . The Roud Folk Song Index catalogues folk songs and their variations by number , and classifies this song as 13026 .
= = Origins = =
The earliest known version was published in Samuel Arnold 's Juvenile Amusements in 1797 with the lyrics :
A manuscript addition to a copy of Mother Goose 's Melody published in 1803 has the modern version with a different last line : " Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again " . It was published in 1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton 's Garland as :
In 1842 , James Orchard Halliwell published a collected version as :
According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term " humpty dumpty " referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century . The riddle probably exploited , for misdirection , the fact that " humpty dumpty " was also eighteenth @-@ century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person . The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged , whereas an egg would be . The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle , since the answer is now so well known . Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages , such as " Boule Boule " in French , " Lille Trille " in Swedish and Norwegian , and " Runtzelken @-@ Puntzelken " or " Humpelken @-@ Pumpelken " in different parts of Germany — although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English .
= = Meaning = =
The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg , possibly because it may have been originally posed as a riddle . There are also various theories of an original " Humpty Dumpty " . One , advanced by Katherine Elwes Thomas in 1930 and adopted by Robert Ripley , posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England , depicted as humpbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare 's play , and who was defeated , despite his armies , at Bosworth Field in 1485 .
Professor David Daube suggested in The Oxford Magazine of 16 February 1956 that Humpty Dumpty was a " tortoise " siege engine , an armoured frame , used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary held city of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War . This was on the basis of a contemporary account of the attack , but without evidence that the rhyme was connected . The theory was part of an anonymous series of articles on the origin of nursery rhymes and was widely acclaimed in academia , but it was derided by others as " ingenuity for ingenuity 's sake " and declared to be a spoof . The link was nevertheless popularised by a children 's opera All the King 's Men by Richard Rodney Bennett , first performed in 1969 .
From 1996 , the website of the Colchester tourist board attributed the origin of the rhyme to a cannon recorded as used from the church of St Mary @-@ at @-@ the @-@ Wall by the Royalist defenders in the siege of 1648 . In 1648 , Colchester was a walled town with a castle and several churches and was protected by the city wall . The story given was that a large cannon , which the website claimed was colloquially called Humpty Dumpty , was strategically placed on the wall . A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground . The Royalists ( or Cavaliers , " all the King 's men " ) attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall , but the cannon was so heavy that " All the King 's horses and all the King 's men couldn 't put Humpty together again " . Author Albert Jack claimed in his 2008 book Pop Goes the Weasel : The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes that there were two other verses supporting this claim . Elsewhere , he claimed to have found them in an " old dusty library , [ in ] an even older book " , but did not state what the book was or where it was found . It has been pointed out that the two additional verses are not in the style of the seventeenth century or of the existing rhyme , and that they do not fit with the earliest printed versions of the rhyme , which do not mention horses and men .
= = In Through the Looking @-@ Glass = =
Humpty appears in Lewis Carroll 's Through the Looking @-@ Glass ( 1872 ) , where he discusses semantics and pragmatics with Alice .
" I don 't know what you mean by ' glory , ' " Alice said .
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously . " Of course you don 't — till I tell you . I meant ' there 's a nice knock @-@ down argument for you ! ' "
" But ' glory ' doesn 't mean ' a nice knock @-@ down argument ' , " Alice objected .
" When I use a word , " Humpty Dumpty said , in rather a scornful tone , " it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less . "
" The question is , " said Alice , " whether you can make words mean so many different things . "
" The question is , " said Humpty Dumpty , " which is to be master — that 's all . "
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything , so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again . " They 've a temper , some of them — particularly verbs , they 're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with , but not verbs — however , I can manage the whole lot ! Impenetrability ! That 's what I say ! "
This passage was used in Britain by Lord Atkin in his dissenting judgement in the seminal case Liversidge v. Anderson ( 1942 ) , where he protested about the distortion of a statute by the majority of the House of Lords . It also became a popular citation in United States legal opinions , appearing in 250 judicial decisions in the Westlaw database as of 19 April 2008 , including two Supreme Court cases ( TVA v. Hill and Zschernig v. Miller ) .
It has been suggested by A. J. Larner that Carroll 's Humpty Dumpty had prosopagnosia on the basis of his description of his finding faces hard to recognise .
" The face is what one goes by , generally , " Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone .
" That 's just what I complain of , " said Humpty Dumpty . " Your face is the same as everybody has — the two eyes , — " ( marking their places in the air with his thumb ) " nose in the middle , mouth under . It 's always the same . Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose , for instance — or the mouth at the top — that would be some help . "
= = In popular culture = =
Humpty Dumpty has become a highly popular nursery rhyme character . American actor George L. Fox ( 1825 – 77 ) helped to popularise the character in nineteenth @-@ century stage productions of pantomime versions , music , and rhyme . The character is also a common literary allusion , particularly to refer to a person in an insecure position , something that would be difficult to reconstruct once broken , or a short and fat person . Humpty Dumpty has been used in a large range of literary works in addition to his appearance as a character in Through the Looking @-@ Glass , including L. Frank Baum 's Mother Goose in Prose ( 1901 ) , where the rhyming riddle is devised by the daughter of the king , having witnessed Humpty 's " death " and her father 's soldiers ' efforts to save him . In Neil Gaiman 's early short story The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds , the Humpty Dumpty story is turned into a film noir @-@ style hardboiled crime story , involving also Cock Robin , the Queen of Hearts , Little Bo Peep , Old Mother Hubbard , and other characters from popular nursery rhymes . Robert Rankin used Humpty Dumpty as one victim of a serial fairy @-@ tale character murderer in The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse ( 2002 ) . Jasper Fforde included Humpty Dumpty in his novels The Well of Lost Plots ( 2003 ) and The Big Over Easy ( 2005 ) , which use him respectively as a ringleader of dissatisfied nursery rhyme characters threatening to strike and as the victim of a murder .
The rhyme has also been used as a reference in more serious literary works , including as a recurring motif of the Fall of Man in James Joyce 's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake . Robert Penn Warren 's 1946 American novel All the King 's Men is the story of populist politician Willie Stark 's rise to the position of governor and eventual fall , based on the career of the corrupt Louisiana Senator Huey Long . It won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize and was twice made into a film All the King 's Men in 1949 and 2006 , the former winning the Academy Award for best motion picture . This was echoed in Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward 's book All the President 's Men , about the Watergate scandal , referring to the failure of the President 's staff to repair the damage once the scandal had leaked out . It was filmed as All the President 's Men in 1976 , starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman . Similarly , Humpty Dumpty is referred to in Paul Auster 's 1985 novel City of Glass , when two characters discuss him as " the purest embodiment of the human condition " and quote extensively from Through the Looking Glass .
It has also been used as a common motif in popular music , including Hank Thompson 's " Humpty Dumpty Heart " ( 1948 ) , The Monkees ' " All the King 's Horses " ( 1966 ) , Aretha Franklin 's " All the King 's Horses " ( 1972 ) , Tori Amos 's " Humpty Dumpty " ( 1992 ) , and Travis 's " The Humpty Dumpty Love Song " ( 2001 ) . In jazz , Ornette Coleman and Chick Corea wrote different compositions , both titled Humpty Dumpty . ( In Corea 's case , however , it is a part of a concept album inspired by Lewis Carroll called " The Mad Hatter " , 1978 ) .
In the Dolly Parton song Starting Over Again , it 's all the king 's horses and all the king 's men who can 't put the divorced couple back together again . In an extra verse in one version of ABBA 's On and On and On , Humpty Dumpty is mentioned as being afraid of falling off the wall .
= = In science = =
Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics . The law describes a process known as entropy , a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged , often taken to be a measure of " disorder " . The higher the entropy , the higher the disorder . After his fall and subsequent shattering , the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle , as it would be highly unlikely ( though not impossible ) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy , as the entropy of an isolated system never decreases .
A variation on the poem using near @-@ sounding French nonsense words is often used to illustrate the difficulty of speech recognition in different languages . A common version is as follows :
To a listener expecting a nursery rhyme , it will generally be heard as the English version , while someone expecting French will instead tend to hear nonsense words .
= Welsh National Opera =
Welsh National Opera ( WNO ) ( Welsh : Opera Cenedlaethol Cymru ) is an opera company based in Cardiff , Wales ; it gave its first performances in 1946 . It began as a mainly amateur body and transformed into an all @-@ professional ensemble by 1973 . In its early days the company gave a single week 's annual season in Cardiff , gradually extending its schedule to become an all @-@ year @-@ round operation , with its own salaried chorus and orchestra . It has been described by The New York Times as " one of the finest operatic ensembles in Europe " .
For most of its existence the company lacked a permanent base in Cardiff , but in 2004 it moved into the new Wales Millennium Centre , Cardiff Bay . The company tours nationally and internationally , giving more than 120 performances annually , with a repertoire of eight operas each year , to a combined audience of more than 150 @,@ 000 people . Its most frequent venues other than Cardiff are Llandudno in Wales and Bristol , Birmingham , Liverpool , Milton Keynes , Oxford , Plymouth , and Southampton in England .
Singers who have been associated with the company include Geraint Evans , Thomas Allen , Anne Evans , and Bryn Terfel . Guest artists from other countries have included Joan Hammond , Tito Gobbi and Elisabeth Söderström . Among the conductors have been Sir Charles Mackerras , Reginald Goodall , James Levine and Pierre Boulez . The company has been led since 2011 by David Pountney as chief executive and artistic director .
= = Background = =
Choral singing became increasingly popular in 19th @-@ century Wales , principally owing to the rise of the eisteddfod as a symbol of its culture . The first Welsh National Opera Company was formed in 1890 . A local newspaper commented that it was remarkable that " a race of people to whom vocal music is a ruling passion should not generations ago have established a permanent national opera " . The company gave performances of operas by the Welsh composer Joseph Parry in Cardiff and on tour in Wales . The company , predominantly amateur with some professional guest singers from the London stage , gave numerous performances of Parry 's Blodwen and Arienwen , composed in 1878 and 1890 respectively . An American tour was planned , but the company folded , and Parry 's final opera , The Maid of Cefn Ydfa , was given at Cardiff by the Moody @-@ Manners Opera Company in 1902 .
A Cardiff Grand Opera Society ran from 1924 to 1934 . It presented week @-@ long annual seasons of popular operas including Faust , Carmen and Il trovatore , and like its predecessor was mainly an amateur body , with professional guest principals . Apart from the productions of these two enterprises , opera in Wales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was generally presented by visiting companies from England .
In the 1930s Idloes Owen , a singing teacher and conductor , ran an amateur choir , the Lyrian Singers , based in Cardiff . In November 1941 , together with John Morgan – a former Carl Rosa baritone – and Morgan 's fiancée Helena Hughes Brown , Owen agreed to found the Lyrian Grand Opera Company , with Brown as secretary and Owen as conductor and general manager . They publicised their plan and held a general meeting of potential supporters in December 1943 ; at that meeting the name of the proposed organisation was changed to " Welsh National Opera Company " . By January 1944 plans were far enough advanced for the company 's first rehearsals to be held . Owen recruited a local businessman , W. H. ( Bill ) Smith ( 1894 – 1968 ) , who agreed to serve as business manager . At first doubtful of the company 's prospects , Smith became its dominant influence , leading fund @-@ raiser , and chairman for twenty years from 1948 .
= = Early years = =
The new company made its debut at the Prince of Wales Theatre , Cardiff on 15 April 1946 with a double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci . The orchestra was professional , mostly drawn from members of the BBC Welsh Orchestra ; all the singers were amateurs , except for Tudor Davies , a tenor well known at Covent Garden and Sadler 's Wells , who sang Canio in Pagliacci . During the week @-@ long season the new company also staged Faust , with Davies in the title role . Although nearing the end of his career he was a considerable box @-@ office draw , and the company played to full houses . Nevertheless , the expense of a professional orchestra and the hire of costumes and scenery outweighed the box @-@ office receipts , and the season made a small loss . Finance remained a recurring problem over the succeeding decades .
Although Owen was the conductor for the performances of Cavalliera Rusticana , and remained as musical director of the company until 1952 , his health was fragile and he conducted none of the company 's other productions . His colleague , the chorus master , Ivor John , was in charge of the first season 's Pagliacci and Faust .
In 1948 the organisation was registered as a limited company , and the Cardiff season was extended from one week to two . The following year the company gave its first performances in Swansea . The chorus featured 120 performers by this time .
The company 's first few seasons attracted little attention from the British musical establishment , but by the early 1950s London papers began to take notice . Picture Post hailed the WNO 's chorus as the finest in Britain . The Times also praised the chorus : " It has body , lightness , rhythmic precision , and , most welcome of all , unflagging and spontaneous freshness . " By this time the company had expanded its repertoire to take in Carmen , La traviata , Madame Butterfly , The Tales of Hoffmann , The Bartered Bride and Die Fledermaus . The Times commented that Smith , Owen and their colleagues were " making history for Wales . The shackles of puritanism , which had kept this country from an art @-@ form perfectly suited to its national talents and predilections ( for histrionics and dressing @-@ up are as natural to the Welsh as singing ) had been broken for ever " .
= = Consolidating : 1950s and 60s = =
In 1952 the company moved its Cardiff venue to the Sophia Gardens Pavilion ( built for the Festival of Britain ) , with the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra as the company 's orchestra , replacing the previous ad hoc ensemble . The Pavilion was acoustically mediocre and lacked an orchestra pit ; two years later the company moved again , to the New Theatre where it played Cardiff seasons across the next fifty years . The 1952 season attracted particular interest because it included what was then a rarity : Verdi 's Nabucco . The company built a reputation for staging seldom @-@ seen Verdi works , including The Sicilian Vespers staged in the same year , I Lombardi in 1956 , and The Battle of Legnano , under the shortened title The Battle , in 1960 . The 1952 Nabucco was the WNO 's first production for which costumes and scenery were specially designed ( by Patrick Robertson ) rather than hired .
In 1953 the company staged its first work by a Welsh composer : Menna by Arwel Hughes . The composer conducted , and the leads were sung by two professional guest stars , Richard Lewis and Elsie Morison . The same year marked WNO 's first appearances outside Wales , playing a week at Bournemouth in April , and a week at Manchester in October , when The Manchester Guardian found the soloists first @-@ rate but the chorus disappointing , in both Nabucco and Il trovatore . A reviewer in The Musical Times commented on potential difficulties in assembling the wholly amateur chorus for performances beyond daily travelling range of their day jobs . By the time of the company 's first London season – a week at Sadler 's Wells in 1955 – the chorus was judged to be " lively and exciting " ( The Musical Times ) , " vibrant " and " moving " ( The Times ) and " joyous " ( The Manchester Guardian ) .
By the mid @-@ 1950s professional singers were cast in leading roles in most productions ; they included Walter Midgley in Tosca and La bohème ( 1955 ) , Raimund Herincx in Mefistofele ( 1957 ) , Heather Harper in La traviata ( 1957 ) , and Joan Hammond in Madame Butterfly ( 1958 ) . A possibility of strengthening the professional element of the company was mooted in 1958 , when a merger was proposed with the Carl Rosa Company , which was in financial difficulties . The proposal was not followed through and WNO continued independently while the Carl Rosa folded .
During the 1960s the company continued to widen its range . Its first Wagner production , Lohengrin , and its first Mozart , The Marriage of Figaro , were both performed in 1962 , conducted by Charles Groves . Another Welsh opera , Hughes 's Serch yw 'r Doctor ( " Love , the Doctor " ) was staged in 1960 . The popular Italian repertoire remained the core of the annual seasons , mostly directed by the head of production , John Moody . Leading roles were taken by rising stars such as John Shirley @-@ Quirk , Gwyneth Jones , Thomas Allen , Josephine Barstow and Margaret Price , the last of whom made her operatic debut with the company in 1962 . Established singers guesting with the company included Geraint Evans who played the title role in Don Pasquale in 1966 , and Ian Wallace in the same part the following year . Evans was also seen as Leporello in Don Giovanni in 1966 and as Falstaff in 1969 .
The gradual switch from amateur to professional continued in 1968 , when for the first time the chorus was supplemented by a smaller , professional group of singers ; the mix of amateur and professional choristers continued over the next five years . At the end of the 1960s the main WNO company , now a year @-@ round operation , consisted of 8 salaried principal singers , 57 guest soloists and a chorus of 90 amateurs and 32 professionals . As well as the Bournemouth players , the company engaged the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic , City of Birmingham Symphony and Ulster orchestras for different venues . In the last season of the decade 32 performances were given in Cardiff and 61 elsewhere in the UK . In addition to the main company , WNO maintained two smaller groups : one , with orchestra , toured Welsh towns , the other , consisting of 12 singers with piano , toured 79 , mostly small , towns in Wales and England . WNO instituted its own training scheme for young singers during the decade .
= = Fully professional : 1970s = =
In 1970 WNO stopped using the Bournemouth and other orchestras and established its own , known at first as the Welsh Philharmonia . Three years later the last amateur element of the company was removed when the chorus became fully professional . A further broadening of the repertoire took place in the 1970s : in 1971 WNO staged the first performances in Britain of Berg 's Lulu , directed by Michael Geliot , who had succeeded Moody in 1969 . In the view of Malcolm Boyd in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera , Geliot , " unpredictable and often controversial " , largely shaped the company 's style in the 1970s . In collaboration with the company 's musical director James Lockhart , Geliot is credited by The Times with introducing new young singers and " directing a host of groundbreaking productions " before leaving in 1978 . The critic Rodney Milnes wrote in 1975 about WNO 's productions :
I have never seen , well , hardly ever , a pretentious , silly or seriously misguided production , and neither have I seen a dull one . … The company 's greatest virtue is that its work is dedicated above all to the service of composers and audiences , and not to some abstract notion of " prestige " nor to the vanity or ambition of individuals , and in this it is almost unique .
In 1973 Geliot 's WNO staging of Britten 's Billy Budd with Allen in the title role was presented on a Swiss tour , and two years later it was given in Barcelona . The company returned to London with its participation in the Amoco Festival of Opera at the Dominion Theatre in 1979 , presenting The Makropoulos Case , The Magic Flute , Ernani , Madame Butterfly , and Tristan and Isolde to capacity audiences .
The company 's traditional preference for the Italian repertoire was partly redressed during the decade : productions include WNO 's first staging of a Richard Strauss opera , Elektra , in 1978 . A new Welsh work , Alun Hoddinott 's The Beach of Falesá , was presented in 1974 . In 1975 , in co @-@ production with Scottish Opera , WNO began a cycle of Janáček operas , directed by David Pountney . Beginning with Jenůfa , the cycle continued with The Makropoulos Case ( 1978 ) , The Cunning Little Vixen ( 1980 ) , Kátya Kabanová ( 1982 ) and From the House of the Dead ( 1982 ) .
Among the guest artists who appeared with the company in the 1970s were the baritone Tito Gobbi , as Falstaff ( 1972 ) , the sopranos Elisabeth Söderström as Emilia in The Makropoulos Case ( 1978 ) and Anne Evans as Senta in The Flying Dutchman ( 1972 ) , and the conductors James Levine ( Aida , 1970 ) and Reginald Goodall ( Tristan and Isolde , 1979 ) .