Birmingham Opera’s ground-breaking performance was the first of three British touring operas in Oporto during the Oporto Cultural Capital of Europe 2001 festival. The other two were Scottish Opera that gave two performances of James MacMillan's Inês de Castro and Welsh National Opera with Beethoven's Leonore.

Birmingham Opera gave two sold out performances of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck at Central Eléctrica do Freixo staged by Graham Vick. It was the first time ever that Birmingham Opera performed in Portugal, also the first time ever that this opera was sung in Oporto.

What made these performances unforgettable and the object of brilliant full page reviews in the major newspapers in the country was the involvement in this production of a large number of residents of a very problematic area of Oporto, the Bairro of Aldoar, people who had never entered a theatre let alone knew what the word opera meant. This was the result of an outstanding pioneering outreach program developed two months before the final performances by the education departments of both Casa Da Música, the promoter of this opera, and Birmingham Opera the performer in collaboration with the Education Department of Society Porto 2001 and the secondary schools of Porto and its suburbs.