We go to the Royal Opera House to hear opera’s big guns but there’s more to the place than that. The Jette Parker Young Artists programme aims to foster emerging talent, and singers taking part often pop up in main-house productions, usually in small roles. The Royal Opera has designated this Meet the Young Artists Week, thus allowing its protégés to take centre-stage, albeit in the stygian depths of the Linbury Theatre.
Comedy is a good test of young singers’ talent, and El Gato con Botas — Puss in Boots— by Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge has its panto elements. Director Pedro Ribeiro aims to bring them to life by using puppets to supplement the human actors. With the Cat, this works well, puppet, puppeteer and singer conspiring to produce a split-screen effect. But eventually the trickery wears thin, just as the initially rude energy of Montsalvatge’s music, now tunefully cartoonish, now salon-smooth, quickly runs down. Still, Luis Gomes plays the Cat’s master with refined bel canto phrasing and some neat comic touches, while Rachel Kelly’s Cat is elegantly energetic. Other characterisations stray into knockabout but Southbank Sinfonia under Paul Wingfield plays with restrained gusto. Something more substantial, or simply funnier, might have given everyone greater scope.
The evening opens with a sterner test, Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs, a unique blend of modernist and archaic sensibilities. Throwing in the occasional flamboyant gesture and using a scarf as an expressive prop, the Serbian soprano Dusica Bijelic delivers them with panache and a pleasing vibrato.
Further performances tomorrow (020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk)
