Mid Wales Opera is calling for support following its failed appeal for funding to the Arts Council of Wales.

The opera company will bring Macbeth to Ceredigion and Gwynedd next year, but the company’s chair is appealing for donations to ensure the company can continue its work until the end of 2024.

Following the completion of its successful SmallStages tour of Berlioz’s Beatrice and Benedict, chair of the board Gareth Williams said: “Audiences have expressed delight with Mid Wales Opera’s witty and joyful Beatrice and Benedict.

“They have echoed the view of The Guardian’s Rian Evans that ‘such a slick staging, with artistic values paramount, is delightful and it could not underline more emphatically the sheer incomprehensibility of the Arts Council of Wales’s recent decision to cut this company’s funding completely’.

“Our thoughts are now turning to the future, with the first night of our much-anticipated new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, in a new orchestral version by our music director, Jonathan Lyness, on 2 March rapidly approaching.

“Unfortunately, beyond that, our future remains very uncertain.

“Our appeal against the Arts Council Wales’ decision to end our funding from April 2024 has been dismissed.

“Nevertheless, we sincerely hope that we will be able to undertake a new SmallStages tour next autumn, as well as a schools’ residency in the early summer.

“While our accumulated reserves – together with the generosity of Beatrice and Benedict audiences who donated more than £3,000 – should take us most of the way towards this, additional financial support from our friends and well-wishers needed to ensure we can do so.”

Anyone wishing to support the work of Mid Wales Opera can donate online or by sending a cheque to Mid Wales Opera, Bryn Wgan, Caersws, SY17 5QU.

The company’s Macbeth MainStages tour will come to Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Thursday, 7 March and Pontio, Bangor on Saturday, 9 March.