The Welsh National Opera’s Rabble Rousers arrives at the Mayflower Theatre on Wednesday.

The season opens with La forza del destino directed by WNO Artistic Director David Pountney and conducted by WNO Conductor Laureate Carlo Rizzi in a personal debut for the Maestro. The well-known overture sets the scene for this dramatic opera full of twists and turns that sees the heroine Leonora torn between her lover Don Alvaro and allegiance to her family.

Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones will sing the role of Don Alvaro in La forza del destino, and is joined by soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams as Leonora. Completing the cast are Miklós Sebestyén (Il Marchese Di Calatrava / Padre Guardiano), Luis Cansino (Don Carlo Di Vargas), Justina Gringyte (Preziosilla / Curra), Donald Maxwell (Fra Melitone), Alun Rhys-Jenkins (Mastro Trabuco) and Wyn Pencarreg (Alcade).

Romance and tragedy are on the menu for WNO’s revival of its production of Tosca in this thrilling story of love, lust, murder and corruption which has become one of the best-loved operas.

Featuring beautiful arias including Floria Tosca’s ‘Vissi d’arte’, the story is punctuated with twists and turns from start to its gripping finish. Conducting of Tosca in Cardiff and on tour will be shared by Carlo Rizzi and Tête à Tête Music Director Timothy Burke.

The production will feature a double cast in the roles of Mario Cavaradossi and Floria Tosca; Hector Sandoval and Gwyn Hughes Jones will share the tenor role, with Claire Rutter and Mary Elizabeth Williams sharing the soprano role. Mark S Doss will take the role of the villainous Scarpia, and the cast is completed by Daniel Grice (Cesare Angelotti) and Donald Maxwell (Sacristan).

The main scale season concludes with the revival of John Caird’s 2011 staging of Don Giovanni, with design by John Napier.

Based on the tale of Don Juan, Don Giovanni follows the demise of opera’s legendary seducer as his rogueish womanising catches up with him and he meets his end through a force from beyond the grave.

One of the most popular and much-performed operas, this has everything from murder to lust to comedy, drama and the supernatural. Don Giovanni will be revived by Caroline Chaney, with James Southall conducting.

Irish tenor Gavan Ring will make both his WNO debut and a role debut as Don Giovanni. Elizabeth Watts and David Stout will return following their performances in WNO’s Figaro trilogy in 2016 to sing Donna Elvira and Leporello respectively. The cast is completed by Miklós Sebestyén (Commendatore), Emily Birsan (Donna Anna), Benjamin Hulett (Don Ottavio), Katie Bray (Zerlina) and Gareth Brynmor John (Masetto).

Talking about the season, David Pountney says: “As you might expect, a season of Rabble Rousers contains a lot of demonstrably noisy people – Preziosilla banging her drum for war, Don Giovanni leading a paean to “La Liberta” and Cavaradossi bursting into vocal flames at the news of Napoleon’s victory at Marengo. The three operas of our spring season bristle with rule breakers, revolutionaries and the enemies of convention – people of unbridled passion whose characters spring out so readily from the pages of an operatic score.

“Our new production of the season, La forza del destino, straddles conflicting worlds very much in the manner of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” - possibly not an accidental reference as it was written for St. Petersburg. It begins with an attempted elopement and an accidental murder, and these events set in train a relentless quest for forgiveness and revenge respectively which crosses a violent and unstable world torn apart by war. It always surprises me when people complain that the plot of Forza is disjointed, untidy. Lives lived in the midst of war and terror are seldom tidy, predictable or even rational. This is a world of extremes explored with epic dramatic vision by Verdi, who is branching out at this point in his career into increasingly radical and original dramatic structures. It sets the tone for a season unashamedly dedicated to the wilder side of life.”