It can be a rocky road for young artists in the opera world. Years of opera training and no guarantee of success. Still – there is help out there.

Private patrons and mentors are part of the answer, providing much needed financial support and mentoring for cash-strapped singers. The National Opera Studio, NOS for short, has also become a essential training centre for young artists, providing bespoke opera courses, opera mentors, even bursaries. With its close links with the UK’s leading opera houses, it is a unique resource for those aiming to enter English National Opera, Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, Opera North, Scottish Opera and Welsh National Opera. Thereafter the international stage awaits.

I have often wondered how great opera singers are made and was therefore thrilled to be invited to see NOS’s Young Artists perform in the studio theatre.

The title of the musical project, devised by renowned opera director Keith Warner, was An Operatic Odyssey – Myths and Legends. Under this loose banner, we were invited to hear excerpts of opera by Monteverdi, Purcell, Charpentier and more contemporary composers, Birtwistle, Gavin Higgins, Tippett and Errollyn Wallen.

As I entered the studio I could see to what extent the performance space had been stripped down to bare essentials. Props – several benches. It was clear that the audience had only to focus on the artist, voice and dramatic ability.

It was unnerving at first to be in such close proximity to the singers. We are so used to seeing heavily made up artists in costume, performing on a faraway stage. Instead, there they were, several feet away from us, dressed in black tops and leggings, singing, dancing around the studio, eyeing us intensely in Sondheim’s Invocation and instructions to the Audience.

This was to be the icebreaker before the audience was transported to a world of early opera. There was little in the way of costume or make-up – in some cases I would have preferred some singers to define themselves with just a trace of colour!

Warner however did a fantastic job of highlighting the strengths of his students, creating not only solo opportunities, but ensembles, chorus scenes. There was a sense that these young artists work as a team. It was inevitably a tricky thing to let everyone have their aria and reflecting back on the performance, there were certain scenes and indeed artists that have lodged in my memory.

Sofia Kirwan-Baez, soprano, and bass-baritone, Smelo Mahlangu were convincing as a tortured couple in Dido’s Ghost by Errollyn Wallen, a bluesy version of Purcell’s original Dido and Aeneas. Draped in a veil, Kirwan-Baez sang with great intensity and passion. It was a captivating performance.

Georgia Mae Ellis’s powerful mezzo in the Wagnerian-Mahler mode, created great drama in Birtwistle’s Minotaur.

Robert Forrest and Jonathan Eyes performed well as emotionally spent soldiers in Tippet’s King Priam, whereas Rhydian Jenkins, who is being coached by singer Nicky Spence and Adrian Thompson, really showed his star qualities in Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. As Telemaco, Ulysses’s son who is reunited with his father Achilles, Rhydian’s tenor reproduced a delicious array of emotions and textures. Definitely a singer to watch out for in 2024 when he performs the role of Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Garsington Opera.

Camille Seale’s mezzo was beautifully smooth, and her wild child character well conceived in Gavin Higgins’s The Monstrous Child. A class act!

This is of course an impressionistic account of what was a fascinating rich programme of modernised baroque and contemporary opera. All credit to all singers and musicians and I will be keen to see where their careers take them from here.

KH

For further information about becoming a friend or supporting NOS’s work contact Jennifer.Hawthorn@nationaloperastudio.org.uk