By Jon Gower BBC Wales arts correspondent

For the first time in its history the Royal Opera House in London has decided to set up a partnership - and it has chosen a small but distinguished Welsh company as its partner.

Music Theatre Wales will gain a London base from the deal and the Royal Opera House will be able to expand its range of 20th and 21st century small scale opera.

This is a great artistic endorsement of a small Welsh company

Michael McCarthy

There are also plans for the two bodies to jointly commission new works.

Music Theatre Wales' artistic director, Michael McCarthy, is buoyed up by the fact that The Royal Opera House has chosen the Welsh company as its partner.

"This is a great artistic endorsement of a small Welsh company which is now achieving great success on the international stage, " he said in a break in rehearsals.

The Royal Opera House has recently set up a new department - ROH2 - - which will present new art and artists to new audiences.

Artistic director of ROH2, Deborah Bull says "This is a first for the Royal Opera House - to be forming a strategic relationship with another performing arts company - and to be working together with them to achieve common aims."

Music Theatre Wales has already staged Nigel Osborne's opera 'The Electrification of the Soviet Union' at Covent Garden.

There are plans to showcase a new Welsh opera

At the end of the month the company will undertake a series of workshops at the ROH.

There are plans to showcase Welsh composer Lynne Plowman's first ever opera ''Gwyneth and the Green Knight' in the spring, following a successful tour of Wales and England in 2002.

The company is committed to exploring and promoting new work as Michael McCarthy explained:� True art is, in fact, new art.

"You've got to create new work, you've got to have new opportunities for composers and writers to exercise their minds and their imaginations - both as a mirror to society but also as a way of challenging us and taking us forward.

We've got to create new work for future audiences and this is where they start."

Music Theatre Wales has come a long way since it was established in the late1980s.

Since then it has created 16 productions and performed across the UK as well as touring Germany, France, Norway, Ireland, Canada and The Netherlands.

It has already commissioned four new works between now and 2008 - a second work by Lynne Plowman called 'House of Gods' as well as new musical offerings by Nigel Osborne, Aribert Reimann, Michael Berkeley - which means that lovers of new opera in both Wales and London should have plenty to enjoy.