PENYBERTH: The night three men burned down an RAF bombing school is coming to a Swansea stage

In September 1936, three men set fire to an RAF bombing school on the Llŷn Peninsula, drove to the nearest police station and handed themselves in.

Ninety years on, that night has been turned into an opera, and it arrives in Swansea on 26 November.

Fflamau Penyberth, or Flames of Penyberth, is performed at Taliesin Arts Centre as part of a tour of Wales by the Welsh-language opera company OPRA Cymru.

One of the three arsonists was DJ Williams, born at Rhydcymerau near Llanybydder, who taught English at Fishguard grammar school for most of his career and helped found Plaid Cymru in 1925.

The other two were Saunders Lewis, the poet and dramatist, and Lewis Valentine, a Baptist minister from Llanddulas.

A jury that would not convict, and 15,000 waiting at Caernarfon

The fire was set on 8 September 1936 at RAF Penrhos, near Pwllheli.

A jury at Caernarfon Assizes failed to agree a verdict that October, and the case was moved to the Old Bailey, where the three were sentenced to nine months in Wormwood Scrubs.

They came out as heroes. OPRA Cymru says a crowd of 15,000 turned out to welcome them in Caernarfon.

What was lost before the airfield went up

Penyberth itself was a farmhouse. It had been home to generations of patrons of Welsh poets, and a stopping point for pilgrims travelling to Bardsey Island.

It was demolished to build the airfield, which was to train air observers, gunners and bomber crews. The protests that followed helped shape Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru, the party that became Plaid Cymru.

Saunders Lewis went on to give the 1962 radio lecture Tynged yr Iaith, warning that Welsh would die out unless people acted. It led to the founding of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg.

Lewis Valentine had been the party’s first president, elected after he met Lewis and others at the 1925 National Eisteddfod in Pwllheli.

DJ Williams wrote dozens of short stories and set down some of the early history of the party in Codi’r Faner in 1968.

Valentine in a cell, and the story told backwards

The music is by Anglesey composer Gareth Glyn. The libretto is by OPRA Cymru founder Patrick Young, from Llan Ffestiniog, written with the author and historian Arwel Vittle, from Caernarfon, who wrote a book on the events called Cythral o Dân.

Vittle said the opera does not start at the fire. “Without giving too much away the opera begins with Lewis Valentine in a prison cell and the story is told in a series of flashbacks,” he said.

“Some artistic licence has been taken and events shortened but the premise of the story remains historically accurate.”

Patrick Young said the company had set out to retell “the extraordinary story of three God-fearing men who set fire to an airbase before they hand themselves in to police”.

Tenor Robyn Lyn Evans and baritones Emyr Wyn Jones and Robin Gruffudd Hughes take the leading roles, with a cast of six others.

The tour opens at Neuadd Dwyfor, Pwllheli, on 19 November, then visits Theatr y Stiwt in Rhosllannerchrugog, Pontio in Bangor, Taliesin in Swansea on 26 November, the Memo Arts Centre in Barry, Theatr Brycheiniog in Brecon and Theatr y Werin in Aberystwyth, before finishing back at Pwllheli on 5 December.

Tickets are through the individual box offices, with tour details at opra.cymru.