Cate Blanchett

Catherine Elise Blanchett AC (/ˈblæntʃɪt/ BLAN-chit; born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actress and producer. Regarded as one of the best performers of her generation, she is known for her versatile work across independent films, blockbusters, and stage. She has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards.

A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Blanchett began her career on the Australian stage. Making her film debut in 1997, she came to international prominence for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in biographical period drama Elizabeth (1998), for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. Her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in the biopic The Aviator (2004) won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing a neurotic former socialite in the comedy-drama Blue Jasmine (2013). Blanchett's other Oscar-nominated roles are in Notes on a Scandal (2006), I'm Not There (2007), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Carol (2015), and Tár (2022), making her the most-nominated Australian. Her biggest commercial successes include The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Cinderella (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Ocean's 8 (2018), and Don't Look Up (2021).

Blanchett has performed in over twenty stage productions. She and her husband, Andrew Upton, were the artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company from 2008 to 2013. Some of her stage roles during this period were in acclaimed revivals of A Streetcar Named Desire, Uncle Vanya, Big and Little and The Maids. She made her Broadway debut in 2017 in The Present, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She has also received two Emmy Award nominations for producing and starring as Phyllis Schlafly in the period drama miniseries Mrs. America (2020).

Blanchett is the recipient of several honorary awards. The Australian government awarded her the Centenary Medal in 2001, and she was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2017. In 2012, she was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. In 2015, she was honoured by the Museum of Modern Art and received the British Film Institute Fellowship. Blanchett has received honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the University of New South Wales, University of Sydney and Macquarie University. Time named her one of its 100 most influential people in the world in 2007. In 2018, she was ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses.

## Early life and education

Catherine Elise Blanchett was born on 14 May 1969 in the Ivanhoe suburb of Melbourne. Her Australian mother, June (née Gamble), was a property developer and teacher; and her American father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett Jr., a Texas native, was a United States Navy Chief Petty Officer who became an advertising executive. They met when Robert's ship broke down in Melbourne. When Blanchett was ten, her father died of a heart attack, leaving her mother to raise the family. Blanchett is the second of three children, with an older brother and younger sister. Her ancestry includes English, some Scottish, and remote French roots.

Blanchett has described herself as a "part extrovert, part wallflower" child. During her teenage years she had a penchant for dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, and went through goth and punk phases, at one point shaving her head. She attended primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School; for her secondary education, she attended Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School and then Methodist Ladies' College, where she explored her passion for the performing arts. In her late teens and early twenties, she worked at a nursing home in Victoria. After high school, she began a degree in economics and fine arts at the University of Melbourne but dropped out after one year to travel overseas. While in Egypt, Blanchett was asked to be an extra as an American cheerleader in the Egyptian boxing film Kaboria (1990); in need of money, she accepted the job. On returning to Australia, she moved to Sydney and enrolled at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

## Career

### 1992–2000: Early work and international breakthrough

Blanchett's first stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush, in the 1992 David Mamet play Oleanna for the Sydney Theatre Company. That year, she was also cast as Clytemnestra in a production of Sophocles' Electra. A couple of weeks after rehearsals, the actress playing the title role pulled out, and director Lindy Davies cast Blanchett in the role. Her performance as Electra became one of her most acclaimed at NIDA. In 1993, Blanchett was awarded the Sydney Theatre Critics' Best Newcomer Award for her performance in Timothy Daly's Kafka Dances and won Best Actress for her performance in Mamet's Oleanna, making her the first actor to win both categories in the same year. Blanchett played the role of Ophelia in an acclaimed 1994–1995 Company B production of Hamlet directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh, and was nominated for a Green Room Award. She appeared in the 1994 TV miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the miniseries Bordertown (1995) with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode of Police Rescue entitled "The Loaded Boy". She also appeared in the 50-minute drama short Parklands (1996), which received an Australian Film Institute (AFI) nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Blanchett made her feature film debut with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II, in Bruce Beresford's film Paradise Road (1997), which co-starred Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. The film made just over \$2 million at the box office on a budget of \$19 million and received mixed reviews from critics. Her first leading role came later that year as eccentric heiress Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong's romantic drama Oscar and Lucinda (1997), opposite Ralph Fiennes. Blanchett received wide acclaim for her performance, with Emanuel Levy of Variety declaring, "luminous newcomer Blanchett, in a role originally intended for Judy Davis, is bound to become a major star". She earned her first AFI Award nomination as Best Leading Actress for Oscar and Lucinda. She won the AFI Best Actress Award in the same year for her starring role as Lizzie in the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997), co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O'Connor.

Blanchett's played a young Elizabeth I in the critically acclaimed historical drama Elizabeth (1998), directed by Shekhar Kapur. The film catapulted her to international prominence, earning her the Golden Globe Award and British Academy Award (BAFTA), and her first Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In his review for Variety, critic David Rooney wrote of her performance, "Blanchett conveys with grace, poise and intelligence that Elizabeth was a wily, decisive, advanced thinker, far too aware of her own exceptional nature to bow to any man. [She] builds the juicy character almost imperceptibly from a smart but wary young woman who may be in over her head into a powerful creature of her own invention." Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Blanchett's performance "brings spirit, beauty and substance to what otherwise might have been turned into a vacuous role", and Alicia Potter writing for the Boston Phoenix stated that, "In the end, Kapur's crown jewel is a tale of twin transformations, that of Elizabeth into one of history's most enigmatic and powerful women, and that of Blanchett into, well, a bona fide screen queen."

The following year, Blanchett appeared in Bangers (1999), an Australian short film and part of Stories of Lost Souls, a compilation of thematically related short stories. The short was written and directed by her husband, Andrew Upton, and produced by Blanchett and Upton. She also appeared in the Mike Newell comedy Pushing Tin (1999), with her performance singled out by critics, and the critically acclaimed and financially successful film The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), alongside Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. She received her second BAFTA nomination for her performance as Meredith Logue in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

### 2001–2007: The Lord of the Rings and established actor

Blanchett appeared in Peter Jackson's blockbuster trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, playing the role of elf leader Galadriel in all three films. The trilogy was a major critical and financial success, earning \$2.981 billion at the box office worldwide, and all three films were later ranked within the top 10 greatest fantasy movies of all time in a poll conducted by American magazine Wired in 2012. In addition to The Lord of the Rings, 2001 also saw Blanchett diversify her portfolio with a range of roles in the dramas Charlotte Gray and The Shipping News and the American crime-comedy Bandits, for which she earned a second Golden Globe and SAG Award nomination. Bandits marked Blanchett's first notable foray into the comedy genre, with Ben Falk of the BBC declaring her and co-star Billy Bob Thornton "a real find as comedians" and calling her performance as an unsatisfied housewife caught between two escaped convicts, "unhinged, though undeniably sexy".

In 2002, Blanchett starred opposite Giovanni Ribisi in Tom Tykwer-directed Heaven, the first film in an unfinished trilogy by acclaimed writer-director Krzysztof Kieślowski. Her performance in the film as a grieving woman who commits a desperate act of terrorism was highly praised, with Stephen Holden of The New York Times calling it, "the most compelling screen performance of her career" and going on to state, "Although Ms. Blanchett's face has always registered emotion with a mercurial fluidity, the immediacy of feeling she conveys in "Heaven" is astonishing." 2003 saw Blanchett again playing a wide range of roles: Galadriel in the third and final instalment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture); the Ron Howard-directed western thriller The Missing; Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, playing two roles (both against herself), for which she received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female nomination; and the biographical Veronica Guerin, which earned her a Golden Globe Best Actress Drama nomination. In 2004, Blanchett portrayed a pregnant journalist chronicling an underwater voyage by an eccentric oceanographer in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Blanchett won her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2005, for her highly acclaimed portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004). This made Blanchett the first actor in history to win an Academy Award for portraying another Academy Award-winning actor. She lent her Oscar statuette to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote that Blanchett portrayed Hepburn with "lip-smacking vivacity", and Roger Ebert lauded the performance, describing it as "delightful and yet touching; mannered and tomboyish". During her preparation for the role, and at the request of Scorsese, Blanchett reviewed 35-millimeter prints of all of Hepburn's first 15 screen performances to study and memorise her poise, mannerisms and speech pattern. Blanchett spoke of the responsibility of portraying such an iconic star, stating, "Representing Kate in the same medium, film, in which she existed was very daunting. But because she was so private and few people really knew her, we basically know Hepburn through her films. So of course you have to give a nod to her screen persona when playing her." That year, Blanchett also won the Australian Film Institute Best Actress Award for her performance as Tracy Heart, a former heroin addict, in the Australian film Little Fish (2005), co-produced by her and her husband's production company, Dirty Films. Though lesser known globally than some of her other films, the sober and sensitive Little Fish received great critical acclaim in Blanchett's native Australia and was nominated for 13 Australian Film Institute awards.

In 2006, Blanchett portrayed Hedda Gabler at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the Sydney Theatre Company production of Hedda Gabler, directed by Robyn Nevin. She then starred opposite Brad Pitt in Alejandro González Iñárritu's multi-lingual, multi-narrative drama Babel, as one half of a grieving couple who get caught up in an international incident in Morocco. Babel received seven Academy Award nominations. She also co-starred in the Steven Soderbergh-directed World War II-set drama The Good German with George Clooney, and the acclaimed psychological thriller Notes on a Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench. Blanchett received a third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the latter film, where she portrays a lonely teacher who embarks on an affair with a 15-year-old student and becomes the object of obsession for an older woman played by Dench. Both Blanchett's and Dench's performances were highly acclaimed, with Peter Bradshaw writing in The Guardian, "Director Richard Eyre, with unshowy authority, gets the best out of Dench and Blanchett and, with great shrewdness, elicits from these two actors all the little tensions and exasperations - as well as the genuine tenderness - in their tragically fraught relationship."

In 2007, Blanchett was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World, and appeared on Forbes' Celebrity 100 list. She made a cameo as Janine, forensic scientist and ex-girlfriend of Simon Pegg's character, in Edgar Wright's action comedy film Hot Fuzz (2007). The cameo was uncredited and she gave her fee to charity. She reprised her role as Queen Elizabeth I in the 2007 sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age directed by Shekhar Kapur, and portrayed Jude Quinn, one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' experimental film I'm Not There. She won the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Jude Quinn. At the 80th Academy Awards, Blanchett received two nominations – Best Actress for Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There – becoming the first actress to receive a second nomination with the reprisal of a role. Of her achievement that year, Roger Ebert said, "That Blanchett could appear in the same Toronto International Film Festival playing Elizabeth and Bob Dylan, both splendidly, is a wonder of acting."

### 2008–2011: Directing the Sydney Theatre Company

Blanchett next appeared in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko. The film received mixed reviews from critics and audiences but was a major box office success, grossing over \$790 million worldwide. In David Fincher's Oscar-nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, she co-starred with Brad Pitt for a second time, playing the title character's love interest, Daisy Fuller. In the same year, Blanchett voiced the character of Granmamare for the English language version of Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo, released in July 2008.

Also in 2008, Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton became co-CEOs and artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. Blanchett returned to acting in the theatre in 2009 with the Sydney Theatre Company production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Liv Ullmann. She starred as Blanche DuBois alongside Joel Edgerton as Stanley Kowalski. Ullmann and Blanchett had been meaning to collaborate on a project since Ullman's intended film adaption of A Doll's House fell by the wayside. Blanchett proposed embarking on Streetcar to Ullmann, who jumped at the opportunity after initial discussion.

A Streetcar Named Desire production travelled from Sydney to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. It was a critical and commercial success and Blanchett received acclaim for her performance as Blanche DuBois. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley said, "Ms. Ullmann and Ms. Blanchett have performed the play as if it had never been staged before, with the result that, as a friend of mine put it, 'you feel like you're hearing words you thought you knew pronounced correctly for the first time.'" John Lahr of The New Yorker wrote of her portrayal, "with her alert mind, her informed heart, and her lithe, patrician silhouette, [Blanchett] gets it right from the first beat ... I don't expect to see a better performance of this role in my lifetime." Jane Fonda, who attended a New York show, deemed it "perhaps the greatest stage performance I have ever seen", and Meryl Streep declared, "That performance was as naked, as raw and extraordinary and astonishing and surprising and scary as anything I've ever seen ... I thought I'd seen that play, I thought I knew all the lines by heart, because I've seen it so many times, but I'd never seen the play until I saw that performance." Blanchett won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The production and Blanchett received Helen Hayes Awards, for Outstanding Non-Resident Production and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Non-Resident Production award, respectively.

In 2010, Blanchett starred as Lady Marion opposite Russell Crowe's titular hero in Ridley Scott's epic Robin Hood. The film received mixed reviews from critics but was a financial success, earning \$321 million at the worldwide box office. In 2011, she played the antagonist CIA agent Marissa Wiegler in Joe Wright's action thriller film Hanna, co-starring with Saoirse Ronan and Eric Bana.

In 2011, Blanchett took part in two Sydney Theatre Company productions. She played Lotte Kotte in a new translation of Botho Strauß's 1978 play Groß und klein (Big and Small) from Martin Crimp, directed by Benedict Andrews. After its Sydney run, the production travelled to London, Paris, the Vienna Festival and Ruhrfestspiele. Blanchett and the production received wide acclaim. Blanchett was nominated for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Best Actress, and won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and the Helpmann Award for Best Actress. She then played Yelena, opposite Hugo Weaving and Richard Roxburgh, in Andrew Upton's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, which travelled to the Kennedy Center and the New York City Center as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. The production and Blanchett received critical acclaim, with The New York Times' Ben Brantley declaring, "I consider the three hours I spent on Saturday night watching [the characters] complain about how bored they are among the happiest of my theatregoing life ... This Uncle Vanya gets under your skin like no other I have seen ... [Blanchett] confirms her status as one of the best and bravest actresses on the planet." The Washington Post's Peter Marks dubbed the production Washington, D.C.'s top theatrical event of 2011. Blanchett received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Non-Resident Production, and the Helpmann Award for Best Actress.

### 2012–2016: Blue Jasmine and resurgence in Hollywood

Blanchett reprised her role as Galadriel in Peter Jackson's adaptations of The Hobbit (2012–2014), prequel to The Lord of the Rings series, filmed in New Zealand. While less critically acclaimed than The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy was nonetheless a major box office success, earning nearly \$3 billion worldwide. The character of Galadriel does not appear in J.R.R. Tolkien's original novel, but the story was amended by co-writer Guillermo del Toro and director Peter Jackson so that Blanchett could appear in the film trilogy. She voiced the role of "Penelope" in the Family Guy episode "Mr. and Mrs. Stewie", which aired on 29 April 2012, and Queen Elizabeth II in the episode "Family Guy Viewer Mail 2". Blanchett returned to Australian film with her appearance in The Turning (2013), an anthology film based on a collection of short stories by Tim Winton. She was head of jury of the 2012 and 2013 Dubai International Film Festival. The Sydney Theatre Company's 2013 season was Blanchett's final one as co-CEO and artistic director.

In 2013, Blanchett played Jasmine Francis, the lead role in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, co-starring Alec Baldwin and Sally Hawkins. Her performance garnered widespread acclaim, with some critics considering it to be the finest of her career to that point (surpassing her acclaimed performance in Elizabeth). In his review for The Guardian, Mark Kermode proclaimed, "Blanchett takes on the challenge like a peak-fitness runner facing a marathon, ploughing her way through 26 miles of emotional road pounding, with all the ups and downs, strains and tears, stomach turns and heartburns that that entails, a feat that occasionally leaves her (and us) gasping for breath." Peter Travers, reviewing the film for Rolling Stone, called Blanchett's performance, "miraculous", and went on to write, "The sight of Jasmine – lost, alone and unable to conjure magic out of unyielding reality – is devastating. This is Blanchett triumphant, and not to be missed." The performance won her more than 40 industry and critics' awards, including the LAFCA Award, NYFCC Award, NSFC Award, Critics' Choice Award, Santa Barbara International Film Festival Outstanding Performance of the Year Award, SAG Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, Independent Film Spirit Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress. Blanchett's win made her just the sixth actress to win an Oscar in both of the acting categories, the third to win Best Actress after Best Supporting Actress, and the first Australian to win more than one acting Oscar.

Allen's adopted daughter Dylan Farrow has since criticised Blanchett and other actresses for working with Allen. Blanchett responded, "It's obviously been a long and painful situation for the family and I hope they find some resolution and peace." On the subject of the Me Too movement, Blanchett said she thinks that "social media is fantastic about raising awareness about issues, but it's not the judge and jury" and the cases "need to go into court, so if these abuses have happened, the person is prosecuted, so someone, who is not in the shiny industry that I am, can use that legal precedent to protect themselves. Always, in my industry or any other industry, they're preyed upon because they're vulnerable."

In 2014, Blanchett co-starred with Matt Damon and George Clooney in the latter's ensemble film, The Monuments Men, based on the true story of a crew of art historians and museum curators who recover renowned works of art stolen by Nazis. The French heroine Rose Valland was an inspiration for Blanchett's character of Claire Simone. The Monuments Men received mixed reviews from critics and grossed \$155 million at the worldwide box office. That year, Blanchett also voiced the part of Valka in the DreamWorks Animation film How to Train Your Dragon 2. The film received critical acclaim and was a box office success. It went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Blanchett guest starred on the Australian show Rake, as the onscreen female version of Richard Roxburgh's rogue protagonist, Cleaver. On 29 January 2015, she co-hosted the 4th AACTA Awards with Deborah Mailman.

In 2015, Blanchett starred in five films. She portrayed Nancy in Terrence Malick's Knight Of Cups, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. IndieWire named Blanchett's performance in Knight of Cups one of the 15 best performances in Terrence Malick films. She starred as the villainous Lady Tremaine in Disney's Kenneth Branagh-directed live-action adaptation of Cinderella, to critical acclaim. Writing for Time magazine, Richard Corliss declared that "Blanchett [earns top billing], radiating a hauteur that chills as it amuses; the performance is grand without skirting parody." She then starred opposite Rooney Mara in Carol, the highly acclaimed film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, reuniting her with director Todd Haynes. Blanchett, who also served as an executive producer of the film, drew rave reviews for her performance as the titular character, which was widely cited as one of the best of her career, alongside Elizabeth and Blue Jasmine. Justin Chang of Variety proclaimed, "As a study in the way beautiful surfaces can simultaneously conceal and expose deeper meanings, [Blanchett's] performance represents an all-too-fitting centerpiece for this magnificently realized movie." For Carol, Blanchett received again Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA Award nominations.

Blanchett portrayed Mary Mapes opposite Robert Redford's Dan Rather in Truth (2015), a film about the Killian documents controversy. Blanchett's production company was a producing partner for the film. She then starred in Manifesto, Julian Rosefeldt's multi-screen video installation, in which 12 artist manifestos are depicted by 13 different characters all played by Blanchett. The project, and Blanchett, received critical acclaim, with Roberta Smith of The New York Times stating: "If the art world gave out Oscars, Cate Blanchett should win for her tour de force of starring roles in 'Manifesto'". In 2016, Blanchett narrated one of two versions of Terence Malick's documentary on Earth and the universe, Voyage of Time, which had its world premiere at the 73rd Venice Film Festival.

### 2017–2020: Broadway debut and television success

Blanchett starred in the Sydney Theatre Company play The Present, Andrew Upton's adaption of Anton Chekhov's play Platonov, directed by John Crowley. The production debuted in Sydney in 2015, to critical acclaim, and transferred to Broadway in 2017, marking Blanchett's Broadway debut. Blanchett's performance during the play's Broadway run received acclaim. Ben Brantley of The New York Times remarked that "Blanchett knows how to hold a stage and, if necessary, hijack it ... Such commanding, try-anything charisma is useful if you're attempting to hold together a badly assembled party or, for that matter, play." For her work, Blanchett received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play, a Drama Desk Award nomination, and a Drama League Award nomination for the Distinguished Performance Award. In 2017, Blanchett also appeared in Terrence Malick's Song to Song, shot back-to-back with Knight of Cups in 2012, and portrayed the goddess of death Hela in the Marvel Studios film Thor: Ragnarok, directed by Taika Waititi. Thor: Ragnarok was both a critical and financial success, earning \$854 million at the worldwide box office.

In 2018, Blanchett starred in Ocean's 8, the all-female spin-off of the Ocean's Eleven franchise, directed by Gary Ross, opposite Sandra Bullock, Anne Hathaway, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna and Awkwafina. The film garnered mainly mixed reviews but was a box office success, earning over \$297 million worldwide. She also portrayed Florence Zimmerman in the film adaptation of The House with a Clock in Its Walls directed by Eli Roth and narrated Shannon Ashlyn's award-winning Australian historical fantasy film Sweet Tooth. Blanchett was appointed the president of the jury of the 71st Cannes Film Festival, which took place in May 2018. That year, Forbes listed her as one of world's highest-paid actresses with annual earnings of \$12.5 million.

Blanchett portrayed a female version of the python Kaa in Andy Serkis' adaptation of The Jungle Book titled Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018). Serkis utilised a mixture of motion capture, CG animation and live-action in the film, and the role of Kaa was written to be much closer to the original character in the short stories by the author Rudyard Kipling, which is as a mentor-like figure for Mowgli. The film was released on Netflix in 2019. In the same year, Blanchett starred in Where'd You Go, Bernadette, an adaptation of the best-selling book of the same name, which was directed by Richard Linklater. The film received mostly mixed reviews and made \$10.4 million at the box office against a budget of \$18 million, but Blanchett's performance as the titular character received praise, with Pete Hammond writing in his review for Deadline, "[The film] doesn't quite measure up to expectations, despite a game performance from the incandescent Cate Blanchett, who clearly is the best reason to see this movie." She received her tenth Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the film. Also that year, she reprised her role as Valka in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards.

In 2020, Blanchett's Dirty Films production company was signed with New Republic Pictures for feature films and FX Networks for television. Blanchett returned to television by starring in two miniseries. She played a supporting role in the Australian drama series Stateless, inspired by the controversial mandatory detention case of Cornelia Rau. Stateless was funded by Screen Australia and Blanchett also served as co-creator and executive producer for the series. It aired on the Australian public broadcaster ABC, and premiered internationally on Netflix. Blanchett won two awards at the 10th AACTA Awards for Stateless: Best Guest or Supporting Actress for her performance, and Best Mini-Series for her role as executive producer.

Blanchett also headlined and produced the FX/Hulu historical drama miniseries Mrs. America (2020), starring as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly. The nine-part series aired to widespread critical acclaim, with James Poniewozik writing in his review for The New York Times, "Her final scene, wordless and devastating, might as well end with Blanchett being handed an Emmy onscreen"; and Michael Idato for The Sydney Morning Herald proclaiming, "Blanchett's track record speaks for itself, but here something else is happening. Every time Blanchett's Schlafly glides perfectly into the frame, there is simply nowhere else to look." At the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards, she received nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie and Outstanding Limited Series, as well as nominations for the Golden Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award (both for her performance), and the Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama. Blanchett also served as an executive producer on the Greek film Apples (2020), directed by Christos Nikou. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival to critical praise, and was selected to be the country's submission to the Academy Awards as their Best Foreign Language Film.

### 2021–present: Tár and further acclaim

In 2021, Blanchett starred alongside Bradley Cooper in Guillermo del Toro's film adaptation of the novel Nightmare Alley, which was released to positive reviews and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. She also appeared alongside Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio in Adam McKay's Don't Look Up, an apocalyptic political satire black comedy film for Netflix, which also received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. With Nightmare Alley and Don't Look Up's Best Picture Oscar nominations, Blanchett broke the record held by actress Olivia de Havilland of being the female actor with the most credited roles in Best Picture nominees.

Blanchett then starred in the 2022 film Tár, directed by Todd Field. Her performance as Lydia Tár, a fictional renowned conductor, received widespread critical acclaim. The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney wrote that Blanchett gives an "astonishing performance — flinty, commandingly self-possessed and ever so slowly splintering under pressure", adding that it "marks yet another career peak for Blanchett – many are likely to argue her greatest". For her performance, she won her second Volpi Cup for Best Actress, fourth Golden Globe Award, and fourth BAFTA Award. She also swept the major critics awards trifecta (NYFCC, LAFCA, NSFC) for the second time and went on to receive her eighth Oscar nomination, tying for the fourth most Oscar-nominated actress. In 2022, Blanchett also voiced Spazzatura in the Netflix film adaptation Pinocchio, reuniting her with del Toro.

Blanchett will next star alongside Kevin Kline in the Apple TV+ thriller series Disclaimer, written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. She will also portray Lilith in Borderlands, a live action adaptation of the video game of the same name, reuniting her with Eli Roth.

## Reception

Blanchett is regarded as one of the finest and most versatile actors of her generation. She is noted for her ability to play characters from many different walks of life, and for headlining and being an ensemble player in a wide range of film genres and production scales, from low-budget independent films to high-profile blockbusters. She has also been praised for her mastery over a wide array of diverse accents, including English, Irish, French, and various regional American accents. In a 2022 readers' poll by Empire magazine, Blanchett was voted one of the 50 greatest actors of all time.

Commenting on her appeal as a screen actor in Vulture, Will Leitch and Tim Grierson stated that her greatest skill was "her ability to combine relatability and elusiveness: She is always completely present and yet just out of grasp. She has been forever daring, uncompromising and perpetually, resolutely, herself." Blanchett's performance in the film Carol was ranked as the 2nd best movie performance of the decade by IndieWire in 2019. Writing of her performance in the film, Christian Zilko states, "The greatest performance in a career where almost every role feels like a legitimate contender, Cate Blanchett's take on Carol Aird is a veritable symphony of repressive silence."

Blanchett has been cited in the press as being a style icon and has frequently topped lists of the best dressed women in the world. In 2004, Blanchett was named the third most naturally beautiful woman of all time by a panel of beauty and fashion editors, make-up artists, model agencies and photographers, behind Audrey Hepburn and Liv Tyler. She was in Empires list of the "100 Sexiest Movie Stars of All-Time" in 2007 and 2013. In 2022, she was named in The Hollywood Reporter's listing of "Women in Entertainment Power 100".

In 2006, a portrait of Blanchett and her family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist for the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Archibald Prize. Another portrait of Blanchett was a finalist for the Archibald Prize in 2014. Blanchett appeared in a series of commemorative postage stamps called Australian Legends in 2009, in recognition of the outstanding contribution made to Australian entertainment and culture. In 2015, Madame Tussauds Hollywood unveiled a wax statue of Blanchett draped in a recreation of the yellow Valentino dress she wore to the 77th Academy Awards in 2005. In 2019, Blanchett was among the "10 inspirational women honored with a larger-than-life bronze sculpture" as part of the Statues for Equality project, which "aims to balance gender representation in public art and honor women's contributions to society". The bronze statues were unveiled on Women's Equality Day: 26 August 2019 on Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Blanchett's statue is "a creation based on a single image from the 2003 photoshoot by Matt Jones for Movieline's Hollywood Life magazine."

## Activism

### Environmental

Blanchett has been a long term proponent of individual and collective action on climate change and other environmental issues. In 2006, she joined former US Vice-president Al Gore's Climate Project. In 2007, Blanchett became the ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation. She was made an honorary life member of the Australian Conservation Foundation in 2012, in recognition of her support for environmental issues. At the beginning of 2011, Blanchett lent her support for a carbon tax. She received some criticism for this, particularly from conservatives. Blanchett is a patron of the international development charity SolarAid, which works to create a sustainable market for solar lights in Africa.

From 2008 to 2011, the Sydney Theatre Company under the leadership of Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton, initiated a comprehensive large scale environmental program called Greening the Wharf, which invested in solar energy, rainwater harvesting, energy efficiency measures and best practice waste management. The program won a Green Globe Award which was accepted by Blanchett and Upton.

In January 2014, Blanchett took part in the Green Carpet Challenge, an initiative to raise the public profile of sustainable fashion, founded by Livia Firth of Eco-Age. In September 2020, as part of her role as Jury President of the 77th Venice International Film Festival, Blanchett vowed that during the festival she would only wear outfits that she had previously worn at public events in an effort to highlight the issue of sustainability in the fashion industry. In October of the same year, Blanchett was appointed by Prince William as a council member for the Earthshot Prize, which provides 50 environmental pioneers with the funds needed to further their work in tackling major problems impacting the environment. In 2022, Blanchett launched the Climate of Change podcast on Audible together with Danny Kennedy to discuss climate change and the importance of preserving the environment.

### Humanitarian

Blanchett has been working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) since 2015. In May 2016, the UNHCR announced her appointment as a global Goodwill Ambassador. Blanchett, along with other celebrities, featured in a video from the UNHCR to help raise awareness to the global refugee crisis. The video, titled "What They Took With Them", has the actors reading a poem written by Jenifer Toksvig and inspired by primary accounts of refugees, and is part of UNHCR's "WithRefugees" campaign, which also includes a petition to governments to expand asylum to provide further shelter, integrating job opportunities, and education.

Blanchett has undertaken missions with the UNHCR to Jordan in 2015, Lebanon in 2016 and Bangladesh in 2018 to meet with and highlight the issues faced by both Syrian and Rohingya refugees in those areas. In January 2018, she was awarded the Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum to honour her advocacy for refugees and displaced people around the world, and in August 2018, she addressed the United Nations Security Council about the atrocities committed against the Rohingya people in Myanmar.

In July 2020, the Australian miniseries Stateless, which was co-created and produced by Blanchett (and originally aired on the ABC network in Australia), premiered on Netflix. The series was inspired by Blanchett's work with the UNHCR and focuses on four strangers whose lives collide at an immigration detention centre in Australia. In Blanchett's words, the show's aim is to "build empathy and understanding for refugees, particularly those who have been and still are in detention."

As an esteemed member of the performing arts community that was seriously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and a person concerned about environmental and humanitarian issues, Blanchett contributed an essay to Upturn: A Better Normal After COVID-19, a book published in 2020 about what could be done to improve society after the pandemic in her native Australia. Blanchett said:

> We engage with the performance of the gesture and the whole of it is greater than the sum of its parts. I think this need to gather is fundamental to who we are, and it has been stymied by Covid-19 but also underlined by it, and that need in us for community addresses the difficult lesson we have to learn: business is not government and government is not a business.

In May 2020, Blanchett was among the celebrities who read an installment of Roald Dahl's children's fantasy novel James and the Giant Peach in aid of the global-non profit charity Partners In Health, co-founded by Dahl's daughter Ophelia, which had been fighting COVID-19 in vulnerable areas.

In September 2020, Blanchett, Helen Mirren, Eddie Redmayne, Salman Rushdie and other figures of British cultural life support the protests of University for Theater and Film Arts (SZFE) students in Budapest against changes ushered Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government that forced a transfer of control of the public institution to a private foundation and a new structure to guide key decisions at the storied SZFE.

## Personal life

Blanchett is married to playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton. They met in Australia in the mid-1990s and married on 29 December 1997. They have three sons, and a daughter, who was adopted in 2015. Blanchett said that she and her husband had wanted to adopt since the birth of their first son.

After making Brighton, England, their main family home for nearly 10 years, she and her husband returned to their native Australia in 2006. In November 2006, Blanchett attributed the move to their desire to select a permanent home for her children, to be closer to her family, and to have a sense of belonging to the Australian theatrical community. She and her family lived in the Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill, extensively renovating their home in 2007 to be more eco-friendly. Following its sale in 2015, she and Upton purchased a house in Crowborough, East Sussex, England, in early 2016.

Blanchett has spoken about feminism and politics, telling Sky News in 2013 that she was concerned that "a wave of conservatism sweeping the globe" was threatening women's role in society. She has also commented on the pressures women in Hollywood face now: "Honestly, I think about my appearance less than I did ten years ago. People talk about the golden age of Hollywood because of how women were lit then. You could be Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and work well into your 50s, because you were lit and made into a goddess. Now, with everything being sort of gritty, women have this sense of their use-by date."

Blanchett was the first ambassador and has been a patron of the Australian Film Institute and its academy, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, since 2001. She is also a patron of the Sydney Film Festival. Blanchett is a patron of the new Australian Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, and spoke at its opening at the Venice Giardini in May 2015. Blanchett spoke at former Prime Minister of Australia Gough Whitlam's state funeral in 2014, and at the Margaret Whitlam dinner and fundraiser event hosted by politician Tanya Plibersek in June 2015.

Blanchett became a spokeswoman for and the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble, in 2005, and brand ambassador for Giorgio Armani fragrances for women in 2013, being paid \$10 million for the latter. In 2018 Armani announced Blanchett would become the first beauty ambassador for the company, representing the company globally by absorbing responsibilities for skincare and make-up, in addition to her previous 2013 commitments to fragrances. In 2022, Louis Vuitton announced Blanchett as its new house ambassador.

## Acting credits and awards

Blanchett has appeared in over 70 films and over 20 theatre productions. As of 2019, Blanchett's films have grossed over \$9.8 billion at the worldwide box office. Her highest-grossing films include The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) trilogies, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Cinderella (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), and Ocean's 8 (2018).

Among her numerous accolades for her acting work, Blanchett has won two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. Her performance as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator made her the only actor to win an Academy Award for portraying an Academy Award-winning actor. Blanchett is one of only four actresses to win the Academy Award for Best Actress after winning Best Supporting Actress. She is the only actress (and one of only six actors) in Oscar history to be nominated twice for playing the same role in two films (Elizabeth I for Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age), and the eleventh actor to receive two acting nominations in the same year. She is also the only Australian to win two acting Oscars.

Blanchett has been recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:

- 71st Academy Awards (1998): Best Actress, nomination, Elizabeth
- 77th Academy Awards (2004): Best Supporting Actress, win, The Aviator
- 79th Academy Awards (2006): Best Supporting Actress, nomination, Notes on a Scandal
- 80th Academy Awards (2007): Best Actress, nomination, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
- 80th Academy Awards (2007): Best Supporting Actress, nomination, I'm Not There
- 86th Academy Awards (2013): Best Actress, win''', Blue Jasmine
- 88th Academy Awards (2015): Best Actress, nomination, Carol
- 95th Academy Awards (2022): Best Actress, nomination, Tár

Blanchett received Premiere'' magazine's Icon Award in 2006. In 2008, she received the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Modern Master Award in recognition of her accomplishments in the film industry. That year, she received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, inducted at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard outside Grauman's Egyptian Theater. She received Women in Film and Television International's Crystal Award for excellence in the entertainment industry in 2014. In 2015, Blanchett was honoured at the Museum of Modern Art's Film Benefit for her outstanding contributions to the industry. She received the British Film Institute Fellowship in recognition of her outstanding contribution to film, presented to her by fellow actor Ian McKellen. Blanchett was also the recipient of the AACTA Longford Lyell Award in 2015, for her "outstanding contribution to the enrichment of Australia's screen environment and culture." In 2016, she received the Costume Designers Guild Lacoste Spotlight Award, in honour of an "enduring commitment to excellence" and her "appreciation for the artistry of costume design and collaboration with the Costume Designers."

Blanchett was awarded the Centenary Medal for Service to Australian Society by the Australian government. In 2012, she was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture, in recognition of her significant contributions to the arts. In 2017, Blanchett was made a Companion of the Order of Australia by the Queen for "eminent service to the performing arts as an international stage and screen actor, through seminal contributions as director of artistic organisations, as a role model for women and young performers, and as a supporter of humanitarian and environmental causes." She has been presented with honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University in recognition of her contribution to the arts, philanthropy and the community. In 2022, she received the Honorary César award from the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma for her "absolutely remarkable career and personality".

## See also

- Cate Blanchett on screen and stage
- List of Academy Award records
- List of actors nominated for two Academy Awards in the same year

Australian actor (born 1969)

Australian expatriate actresses in the United Kingdom

Best Actress AACTA International Award winners

Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners

Best Supporting Actress AACTA Award winners

Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners

Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners

Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners

Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners

Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female winners

National Institute of Dramatic Art alumni

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners

People educated at Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne


Opaque set

In discrete geometry, an opaque set is a system of curves or other set in the plane that blocks all lines of sight across a polygon, circle, or other shape. Opaque sets have also been called barriers, beam detectors, opaque covers, or (in cases where they have the form of a forest of line segments or other curves) opaque forests. Opaque sets were introduced by Stefan Mazurkiewicz in 1916, and the problem of minimizing their total length was posed by Frederick Bagemihl in 1959.

For instance, visibility through a unit square can be blocked by its four boundary edges, with length 4, but a shorter opaque forest blocks visibility across the square with length $\sqrt2+\tfrac12\sqrt6\approx 2.639$. It is unproven whether this is the shortest possible opaque set for the square, and for most other shapes this problem similarly remains unsolved. The shortest opaque set for any bounded convex set in the plane has length at most the perimeter of the set, and at least half the perimeter. For the square, a slightly stronger lower bound than half the perimeter is known. Another convex set whose opaque sets are commonly studied is the unit circle, for which the shortest connected opaque set has length $2+\pi$. Without the assumption of connectivity, the shortest opaque set for the circle has length at least $\pi$ and at most $4.7998$.

Several published algorithms claiming to find the shortest opaque set for a convex polygon were later shown to be incorrect. Nevertheless, it is possible to find an opaque set with a guaranteed approximation ratio in linear time, or to compute the subset of the plane whose visibility is blocked by a given system of line segments in polynomial time.

## Definitions

Every set $S$ in the plane blocks the visibility through a superset of $S$, its coverage $C$. $C$ consists of points for which all lines through the point intersect $S$. If a given set $K$ forms a subset of the coverage of $S$, then $S$ is said to be an opaque set, barrier, beam detector, or opaque cover for $K$. If, additionally, $S$ has a special form, consisting of finitely many line segments whose union forms a forest, it is called an opaque forest. There are many possible opaque sets for any given set $K$, including $K$ itself, and many possible opaque forests. For opaque forests, or more generally for systems of rectifiable curves, their length can be measured in the standard way. For more general point sets, one-dimensional Hausdorff measure can be used, and agrees with the standard length in the cases of line segments and rectifiable curves.

Most research on this problem assumes that the given set $K$ is a convex set. When it is not convex but merely a connected set, it can be replaced by its convex hull without changing its opaque sets. Some variants of the problem restrict the opaque set to lie entirely inside or entirely outside $K$. In this case, it is called an interior barrier or an exterior barrier, respectively. When this is not specified, the barrier is assumed to have no constraints on its location. Versions of the problem in which the opaque set must be connected or form a single curve have also been considered. It is not known whether every convex set $P$ has a shortest opaque set, or whether instead the lengths of its opaque sets might approach an infimum without ever reaching it. Every opaque set for $P$ can be approximated arbitrarily closely in length by an opaque forest, and it has been conjectured that every convex polygon has an opaque forest as its shortest opaque set, but this has not been proven.

## Bounds

When the region to be covered is a convex set, the length of its shortest opaque set must be at least half its perimeter and at most its perimeter. For some regions, additional improvements to these bounds can be made.

### Upper bound

If $K$ is a bounded convex set to be covered, then its boundary $\partial K$ forms an opaque set whose length is the perimeter $|\partial K|$. Therefore, the shortest possible length of an opaque set is at most the perimeter. For sets $K$ that are strictly convex, meaning that there are no line segments on the boundary, and for interior barriers, this bound is tight. Every point on the boundary must be contained in the opaque set, because every boundary point has a tangent line through it that cannot be blocked by any other points. The same reasoning shows that for interior barriers of convex polygons, all vertices must be included. Therefore, the minimum Steiner tree of the vertices is the shortest connected opaque set, and the traveling salesperson path of the vertices is the shortest single-curve opaque set. However, for interior barriers of non-polygonal convex sets that are not strictly convex, or for barriers that are not required to be connected, other opaque sets may be shorter; for instance, it is always possible to omit the longest line segment of the boundary. In these cases, the perimeter or Steiner tree length provide an upper bound on the length of an opaque set.

### Lower bound

There are several proofs that an opaque set for any convex set $K$ must have total length at least $|\partial K|/2$, half the perimeter. One of the simplest involves the Crofton formula, according to which the length of any curve is proportional to its expected number of intersection points with a random line from an appropriate probability distribution on lines. It is convenient to simplify the problem by approximating $K$ by a strictly convex superset, which can be chosen to have perimeter arbitrarily close to the original set. Then, except for the tangent lines to $K$ (which form a vanishing fraction of all lines), a line that intersects $K$ crosses its boundary twice. Therefore, if a random line intersects $K$ with probability $p$, the expected number of boundary crossings is $2p$. But each line that intersects $K$ intersects its opaque set, so the expected number of intersections with the opaque set is at least $p$, which is at least half that for $K$. By the Crofton formula, the lengths of the boundary and barrier have the same proportion as these expected numbers.

This lower bound of $|\partial K|/2$ on the length of an opaque set cannot be improved to have a larger constant factor than 1/2, because there exist examples of convex sets that have opaque sets whose length is close to this lower bound. In particular, for very long thin rectangles, one long side and two short sides form a barrier, with total length that can be made arbitrarily close to half the perimeter. Therefore, among lower bounds that consider only the perimeter of the coverage region, the bound of $|\partial K|/2$ is best possible. However, getting closer to $|\partial K|/2$ in this way involves considering a sequence of shapes rather than just a single shape, because for any convex set $K$ that is not a triangle, there exists a $\delta$ such that all opaque sets have length at least $|\partial K|/2+\delta$.

### Specific shapes

For a triangle, as for any convex polygon, the shortest connected opaque set is its minimum Steiner tree. In the case of a triangle, this tree can be described explicitly: if the widest angle of the triangle is $2\pi/3$ (120°) or more, it uses the two shortest edges of the triangle, and otherwise it consists of three line segments from the vertices to the Fermat point of the triangle. However, without assuming connectivity, the optimality of the Steiner tree has not been demonstrated. Izumi has proven a small improvement to the perimeter-halving lower bound for the equilateral triangle.

For a unit square, the perimeter is 4, the perimeter minus the longest edge is 3, and the length of the minimum Steiner tree is $1+\sqrt3\approx 2.732$. However, a shorter, disconnected opaque forest is known, with length $\sqrt2+\tfrac12\sqrt6\approx 2.639$. It consists of the minimum Steiner tree of three of the square's vertices, together with a line segment connecting the fourth vertex to the center. Ross Honsberger credits its discovery to Maurice Poirier, a Canadian schoolteacher, but it was already described in 1962 and 1964 by Jones. It is known to be optimal among forests with only two components, and has been conjectured to be the best possible more generally, but this remains unproven. The perimeter-halving lower bound of 2 for the square, already proven by Jones, can be improved slightly, to $2.00002$, for any barrier that consists of at most countably many rectifiable curves, improving similar previous bounds that constrained the barrier to be placed only near to the given square.

The case of the unit circle was described in a 1995 Scientific American column by Ian Stewart, with a solution of length $2+\pi$, optimal for a single curve or connected barrier but not for an opaque forest with multiple curves. Vance Faber and Jan Mycielski credit this single-curve solution to Menachem Magidor in 1974. By 1980, E. Makai had already provided a better three-component solution, with length approximately $4.7998$, rediscovered by John Day in a followup to Stewart's column. The unknown length of the optimal solution has been called the beam detection constant.

## Algorithms

Two published algorithms claim to generate the optimal opaque forest for arbitrary polygons, based on the idea that the optimal solution has a special structure: a Steiner tree for one triangle in a triangulation of the polygon, and a segment in each remaining triangle from one vertex to the opposite side, of length equal to the height of the triangle. This structure matches the conjectured structure of the optimal solution for a square. Although the optimal triangulation for a solution of this form is not part of the input to these algorithms, it can be found by the algorithms in polynomial time using dynamic programming. However, these algorithms do not correctly solve the problem for all polygons, because some polygons have shorter solutions with a different structure than the ones they find. In particular, for a long thin rectangle, the minimum Steiner tree of all four vertices is shorter than the triangulation-based solution that these algorithms find. No known algorithm has been guaranteed to find a correct solution to the problem, regardless of its running time.

Despite this setback, the shortest single-curve barrier of a convex polygon, which is the traveling salesperson path of its vertices, can be computed exactly in polynomial time for convex polygons by a dynamic programming algorithm, in models of computation for which sums of radicals can be computed exactly. There has also been more successful study of approximation algorithms for the problem, and for determining the coverage of a given barrier.

### Approximation

By the general bounds for opaque forest length in terms of perimeter, the perimeter of a convex set approximates its shortest opaque forest to within a factor of two in length. In two papers, Dumitrescu, Jiang, Pach, and Tóth provide several linear-time approximation algorithms for the shortest opaque set for convex polygons, with better approximation ratios than two:

- For general opaque sets, they provide an algorithm whose approximation ratio is at most $\frac{1}{2}+\frac{2+\sqrt2}{\pi}\approx 1.5868.$ The general idea of the algorithm is to construct a "bow and arrow" like barrier from the minimum-perimeter bounding box of the input, consisting of a polygonal chain stretched around the polygon from one corner of the bounding box to the opposite corner, together with a line segment connecting a third corner of the bounding box to the diagonal of the box.
- For opaque sets consisting of a single arc, they provide an algorithm whose approximation ratio is at most $\frac{\pi+5}{\pi+2}\approx 1.5835.$ The resulting barrier is defined by a supporting line of the input shape. The input projects perpendicularly onto an interval of this line, and the barrier connects the two endpoints of this interval by a U-shaped curve stretched tight around the input, like the optimal connected barrier for a circle. The algorithm uses rotating calipers to find the supporting line for which the length of the resulting barrier is minimized.
- For connected opaque sets, they provide an algorithm whose approximation ratio is at most $1.5716$. This method combines the single-arc barrier with special treatment for shapes that are close to an equilateral triangle, for which the Steiner tree of the triangle is a shorter connected barrier.
- For interior barriers, they provide an algorithm whose approximation ratio is at most $1.7168$. The idea is to use a generalization suggested by Shermer of the structure of the incorrect earlier algorithms (a Steiner tree on a subset of the points, together with height segments for a triangulation of the remaining input), with a fast approximation for the Steiner tree part of the approximation.

Additionally, because the shortest connected interior barrier of a convex polygon is given by the minimum Steiner tree, it has a polynomial-time approximation scheme.

### Coverage

The region covered by a given forest can be determined as follows:

- Find the convex hull of each connected component of the forest.
- For each vertex $p$ of the hull, sweep a line circularly around $p$, subdividing the plane into wedges within which the sweep line crosses one of the hulls and wedges within which the sweep line crosses the plane without obstruction. The union of the covered wedges forms a set $C_p$.
- Find the intersection of all of the sets $C_p$. This intersection is the coverage of the forest.

If the input consists of $n$ line segments forming $m$ connected components, then each of the $n$ sets $C_p$ consists of at most $2m$ wedges. It follows that the combinatorial complexity of the coverage region, and the time to construct it, is $O(m^2n^2)$ as expressed in big O notation.

Although optimal in the worst case for inputs whose coverage region has combinatorial complexity matching this bound, this algorithm can be improved heuristically in practice by a preprocessing phase that merges overlapping pairs of hulls until all remaining hulls are disjoint, in time $O(n\log^2 n)$. If this reduces the input to a single hull, the more expensive sweeping and intersecting algorithm need not be run: in this case the hull is the coverage region.

## Curve-free opaque sets

`showed that it is possible for an opaque set to avoid containing any nontrivial curves and still have finite total length. A simplified construction of , shown in the figure, produces an example for the unit square. The construction begins with line segments that form an opaque set with an additional property: the segments of negative slope block all lines of non-negative slope, while the segments of positive slope block all lines of non-positive slope. In the figure, the initial segments with this property are four disjoint segments along the diagonals of the square. Then, it repeatedly subdivides these segments while maintaining this property. At each level of the construction, each line segment is split by a small gap near its midpoint into two line segments, with slope of the same sign, that together block all lines of the opposite sign that were blocked by the original line segment. The limit set of this construction is a Cantor space that, like all intermediate stages of the construction, is an opaque set for the square. With quickly decreasing gap sizes, the construction produces a set whose Hausdorff dimension is one, and whose one-dimensional Hausdorff measure (a notion of length suitable for such sets) is finite.`

The distance sets of the boundary of a square, or of the four-segment shortest known opaque set for the square, both contain all distances in the interval from 0 to $\sqrt{2}$. However, by using similar fractal constructions, it is also possible to find fractal opaque sets whose distance sets omit infinitely many of the distances in this interval, or that (assuming the continuum hypothesis) form a set of measure zero.

## History

Opaque sets were originally studied by Stefan Mazurkiewicz in 1916. Other early works on opaque sets include the papers of H. M. Sen Gupta and N. C. Basu Mazumdar in 1955, and by Frederick Bagemihl in 1959, but these are primarily about the distance sets and topological properties of barriers rather than about minimizing their length. In a postscript to his paper, Bagemihl asked for the minimum length of an interior barrier for the square, and subsequent work has largely focused on versions of the problem involving length minimization. They have been repeatedly posed, with multiple colorful formulations: digging a trench of as short a length as possible to find a straight buried telephone cable, trying to find a nearby straight road while lost in a forest, swimming to a straight shoreline while lost at sea, efficiently painting walls to render a glass house opaque, etc.

The problem has also been generalized to sets that block all geodesics on a Riemannian manifold, or that block lines through sets in higher-dimensions. In three dimensions, the corresponding question asks for a collection of surfaces of minimum total area that blocks all visibility across a solid. However, for some solids, such as a ball, it is not clear whether such a collection exists, or whether instead the area has an infimum that cannot be attained.

## See also

- Bellman's lost in a forest problem
- Euclid's orchard

Shape that blocks all lines of sight


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 by Aidan Lang as its General Director since 2019.

## 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). The second season at Sadler's Wells in the summer of 1956, included productions of Nabucco, I Lombardi and Lohengrin, achieving rave reviews. Kenneth Loveland of the South Wales Argus wrote a glowing piece under his byline 'Stroller' "Tonight, amongst working-class streets of the Angel, Islington, I was privileged to witness a body of men and women doing more for Wales than all your sounding harps...or tub thumping politicians".

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).

In the late 1970s WNO combined with the Cardiff-based Welsh Drama Company, becoming the Welsh National Opera and Drama Company. The work of the drama company came under continued criticism, the Welsh Arts Council cut its grant, and the partnership ended in 1979 with the formal closure of the Welsh Drama Company.

## 1980s

During the 1980s WNO continued to expand in scope. Handel (Rodelinda, 1981) and Martinů (The Greek Passion, 1981) were added to the company's repertoire, and in 1983 Das Rheingold was staged in the WNO's first Ring cycle, followed by the other three operas of the cycle over the next two years. Das Rheingold, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were conducted by the company's musical director, Richard Armstrong; Die Walküre (1984) was conducted by Goodall; it was seen as a coup for the company to secure his services – he was described by The Guardian as the greatest living Wagnerian conductor – but the casting of the whole cycle was criticised for some serious weaknesses among the principal singers, and reviewers were generally unimpressed by Göran Järvefelt's production.

The chief executive, Brian McMaster, did not appoint a replacement to Geliot as principal director during the 1980s, preferring to engage guest producers. Boyd mentions Andrei Serban's Eugene Onegin (1980) among the successes and Lucian Pintilie's Carmen (1983) and Ruth Berghaus's Don Giovanni (1984) as productions that received more mixed responses. Sir Charles Mackerras, the conductor for Don Giovanni, was open in his contempt for Berghaus's production. Harry Kupfer's Fidelio (1981) was condemned by The Daily Telegraph as "a piece of Marxist polemic" making "political sport" of Beethoven's work. McMaster was thought by some too inclined to favour radical eastern European directors: Jonathan Miller, a leading English director, commented that he did not intend to take Bulgarian nationality, although it was "a must before Brian pays any attention".

Armstrong stepped down in 1986 after thirteen years as musical director; he was succeeded by Mackerras, whose association with the company dated back more than thirty years. Among the features of his six-year tenure was an increasing use of surtitles for performances not given in English. In the company's early days, all operas had been sung in English, but as more international stars began to appear as guest principals the language policy had to be reconsidered: few of the leading names in world opera were interested in relearning their roles in English. WNO steered a middle course between the practices of the two main London companies; after the 1960s The Royal Opera had generally given operas in the original language, and English National Opera was committed to opera in English. WNO's practice varied, after its early years. Examples from the 1980s include Wagner's Tristan und Isolde sung in German, and the Ring in English; and Verdi's The Force of Destiny given in English and Otello in Italian. Mackerras was a strong advocate of performance in the original language, with surtitles: "I can't imagine a greater advance for opera. ... What a gift! It's like Siegfried understanding the woodbird."

## 1990s

McMaster resigned in 1991, having led the company to international status, with performances at La Scala, Milan; the Metropolitan Opera, New York; and in Tokyo. One of the last legacies of his tenure was the 1992 production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, directed by Peter Stein and conducted by Pierre Boulez. The New York Times called WNO "one of the finest operatic ensembles in Europe" and noted that the first night of the Debussy work, in Cardiff, "attracted 80 critics from all over the United Kingdom and the Continent ... the most prestigious, intensely awaited event of the British operatic season." The production was given at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, a few weeks afterwards.

McMaster was followed as chief executive by Matthew Epstein, whose three years in charge (1991–94) were described in a 2006 study by Paul Atkinson as "a less happy and less successful period". Epstein was replaced by Anthony Freud, under whom, according to Atkinson, productions became "consistently strong, musically well prepared, intelligently staged and well cast." Mackerras was succeeded in 1992 by Carlo Rizzi, who was music director at the time of WNO's golden jubilee in 1996. When the occasion was marked with a new production of the "Cav and Pag" double bill that had launched the company in 1946, the BBC commented that WNO was "one of the most respected opera companies in the world". In The Observer, Michael Ratcliffe called the company "the most popular, populist and consistently successful arts organisation ever to come out of Wales ... with the loyalty and affection of audiences in Cardiff and across England ... 'The people's opera' is not a myth. It happened here." The jubilee celebrations were overshadowed by the collapse of a plan for a purpose-built home for the company, the Cardiff Bay Opera House.

During the 1990s WNO made its Proms debut, with a complete performance of Mozart's Idomeneo, conducted by Mackerras in 1991. The company played three short seasons at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in the mid-1990s, featuring Tristan und Isolde and La favorita in 1993, The Yeomen of the Guard in 1995, and The Rake's Progress and the jubilee double bill of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci in 1996. In 1996 WNO commissioned Sir Peter Maxwell Davies to write an opera for the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary. The resulting opera was The Doctor of Myddfai, whose libretto written by David Pountney and included Welsh-language songs, based on a 12th-century folk tale. It premiered on 10 July 1996 at the North Wales Theatre in Llandudno with following performances in 1996. It was designed by sure Huntley and Donna Muir.

## 21st century

The company entered the new millennium in a state of some turmoil. A financial crisis had led to redundancies in the orchestra and the curtailment of the touring schedule; the conservative works chosen for 2001–02 were condemned by the press as "the dullest programme in recent memory"; and Rizzi was about to be replaced by a young and untried successor, Tugan Sokhiev. Rizzi had gained great respect and affection during his nine-year term as musical director; his successor's reign was brief and unhappy. Having taken up post in 2003, Sohkiev resigned precipitately the following year. Rizzi agreed to reorganise his schedule, and, to public and critical acclaim, returned to the musical directorship in time to prepare the company for its long-awaited move into a permanent base in Cardiff.

After the collapse of the Cardiff Bay Opera House scheme, a new project, the Wales Millennium Centre, met with more success. The necessary consents and funding were obtained, and work began in 2002 on a new multipurpose arts centre on the Cardiff Bay site. The centre included a 1,900-seat theatre, which, among other uses, became WNO's home base from 2004, with its own rehearsal space and offices in the complex.

In the first decade of the 21st century WNO gave more than 120 performances a year, with a repertoire, generally, of eight full-scale operas. Its regular audience figures totalled over 150,000 annually, in ten principal venues, three of them in Wales and seven in England. During this period the company was criticised for being insufficiently Welsh. A local politician, Adam Price, said that WNO ought to have a Welsh musical director; Alun Hoddinott said in 2004, "WNO has put on perhaps four or five Welsh operas over 20 years. ... They just seem to have an anti-Welsh music bias. I am sad that they do not do something for Welsh composers, especially young ones." A more positive view of WNO came from Scotland, where the two main newspapers, The Scotsman and The Herald, greeted a visit from the company in 2005 with enthusiastic praise, contrasting the flourishing of opera in Wales with its neglect by politicians in Scotland and the consequent decline of Scottish Opera. In 2010 WNO commissioned Gair ar Gnawd ("Word on Flesh"), by Pwyll ap Siôn and Menna Elfyn, with words in Welsh, described as "a contemporary story about Wales today ... inspired by the translation of the Bible".

From 2006 to 2011 the chief executive (titled "artistic director") was John Fisher. His term overlapped with that of Lothar Koenigs who was musical director from 2009 to 2016. A highlight of this period was the 2010 production of Die Meistersinger, produced by Richard Jones, starring Bryn Terfel as Hans Sachs. The production won superlatives from reviewers.

In 2011 David Pountney was appointed to succeed Fisher as chief executive. He had worked with the company since the 1970s, most recently on a 2006 The Flying Dutchman with Terfel which was set in space. In 2013 he programmed a trilogy of operas set in Tudor England: Donizetti's Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux, with another trilogy the following year, on the theme of fallen women – Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Henze's Boulevard Solitude and Verdi's La traviata. For 2016 Pountney scheduled another trilogy, this time on the theme of Figaro, consisting of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini's The Barber of Seville and a new work, Figaro Gets a Divorce with music by Elena Langer and libretto by Pountney.

In September 2015 WNO announced the appointment of Tomáš Hanus as its next music director, taking office for the 2016–17 season. At the same time Carlo Rizzi was named the company's conductor laureate, with immediate effect.

In 2023 members of the orchestra were selected to play at the coronation of Charles III and Camilla.

## Recordings

Although the chorus and orchestra of Welsh National Opera have appeared on many commercial recordings, often featuring regular WNO soloists, there have been few sets, either audio or video, of the company's own productions. Among those are Tristan und Isolde conducted by Goodall (1981), Pelléas et Mélisande conducted by Boulez (1992), The Yeomen of the Guard, conducted by Mackerras (1995), The Doctor of Myddfai conducted by Armstrong (1998), and Ariodante conducted by Ivor Bolton, directed by David Alden (1999). The BBC made a studio video recording of a WNO cast in Katya Kabanova, conducted by Armstrong in 1982.

The WNO chorus and orchestra have been engaged for studio opera recordings unconnected with the company's productions, including Hamlet (1983), Norma (1984), Anna Bolena (1987), Ernani (1987) and Adriana Lecouvreur (1988) conducted by Richard Bonynge, Faust (1993) and Katya Kabanova (1994) conducted by Rizzi; and Gloriana (1993), Eugene Onegin (1994) and Jenůfa (2004) conducted by Mackerras. For the WNO jubilee in 1996, Decca drew on some of its studio recordings for a celebratory CD set with contributions from many soloists who had appeared onstage with the company and some who had not, the latter including Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Montserrat Caballé and Thomas Hampson. The orchestra of WNO has made studio recordings of non-operatic music by Elgar, Delius, Coleridge-Taylor and George Lloyd, and several sets of traditional Welsh songs and crossover music.

## Music directors

- Idloes Owen (1943–52)
- Leo Quayle (1952–53)
- Frederick Behrend (1953–55)
- Vilém Tauský (1955)
- Warwick Braithwaite (1956–61)
- Charles Groves (1961–63)
- Bryan Balkwill (1963–66)
- James Lockhart (1968–73)
- Richard Armstrong (1973–86)
- Sir Charles Mackerras (1987–92)
- Carlo Rizzi (1992–2001)
- Tugan Sokhiev (2003–04)
- Carlo Rizzi (2004–07)
- Lothar Koenigs (2009–16)
- Tomáš Hanus (2016–)

: Source: Oxford Dictionary of Music (1943–2009) and WNO (2009–16).

## Awards

Welsh National Opera has been nominated for, or won nearly every UK opera prize, including winning the Olivier Award in 1998 and in 1999. The Royal Philharmonic Society awarded its Music Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera in 1999, 2000 and 2001, giving the company the distinction as the only arts organisation to have won the Award for three consecutive years. WNO's production of Pelléas and Mélisande (1992) won the International Classical Music Awards. Phyllida Lloyd's production of Poulenc's The Carmelites for WNO won the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera in 1999, winning jointly with ENO as co-producers. The production of The Coronation of Poppea in 1997 by David Alden won WNO more awards than any other production: winning, the Evening Standard Award, the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Barclays Theatre Awards.

## Patrons

In 1982, WNO gained its first patron in Diana, Princess of Wales. As patron she attended many gala concerts in New Theatre, Cardiff; Dominion Theatre, London; Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York and in 1984 she opened the new purpose-built headquarters, Princess of Wales Building in John Street, Cardiff. Her attendance at a performance by WNO in New York in 1989 caused much excitement and for road repairs to be immediately carried out. Their visit was seen in an episode of episode 10 'War', series 4 of The Crown. When in 1996 Princess Diana resigned as patron, WNO welcomed HRH Charles Prince of Wales as their new patron.

## See also

- After Aida
- List of opera houses
- Lists of opera companies

## Notes, references and sources

Theatre company based in Cardiff, Wales