The High C Factor: opera’s search for a star
Talent shows may be on the wane, but that hasn’t stopped Glyndebourne launching its own. Rupert Christiansen finds out why
Is time running out for musical talent shows? The TV tide has been ebbing for a while – long gone are the days of X Factor hysteria. But even the more highbrow institutions, such as the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, Placido Domingo’s Operalia and the Met’s Richard Tucker Awards no longer attract the attention or respect they used to command, as pedagogues question the value of judging young artists by comparing them in conditions of extreme stress and the most outstanding new talents get snapped up by agents while they’re still in conservatoire.
So why, you might well ask, do we need The Glyndebourne Opera Cup
– a new competition to discover the best young singers from around the world that will come to a climax next month at the Sussex opera house, with its final broadcast on Sky Arts and compèred by comedian Chris Addison and Glyndebourne’s chatelaine and star soprano Danielle de Niese?
Sebastian Schwarz hopes he has the answers. The contest is the brainchild of the erstwhile director general of Glyndebourne, who resigned from his post unexpectedly last December after only 18 months in the role. While he is keeping mum as to his reasons for departure, “because the Cup is very much my baby, I decided to keep it on. I can’t imagine anyone else giving it quite the heart and commitment that I can.”
Billed as “a platform for launching an international opera career”, the contest is open to anyone between the ages of 21 and 28 and for this first of its biennial iterations, it is focused exclusively on singing the music of Mozart – the composer upon whose operas Glyndebourne’s reputation was built. The prize money may not be enormous (£15,000 for the winner, alongside the promise of a distinguished engagement in a major opera house within five years of winning), but the dream of holding the title lured 184 singers from 44 countries to enter via the submission of a video recording. A third of them were selected to attend one of three days of live auditions in Berlin, London and Philadelphia – a batch that will be whittled down to 23 for the semi-final and 10 for the final, both to be held at Glyndebourne itself.
Several aspects will distinguish this particular endeavour, Schwarz insists. “Glyndebourne has a great record for employing and nurturing young talent from around the world, and this is a way of building on that – there is no restriction based on nationality, as there is for Cardiff Singer of the World [where each nation is only allowed one entry]. The focus on one composer makes us different too, as does a panel of judges without retired singers or voice teachers. All eight of us are actively involved in casting or administration – in other words, we have the power to give people jobs.”
So what will those judges be looking for? Although the competition will not be resorting to any Simon Cowellish razzmatazz, it isn’t afraid to admit to a certain sporting championship edge – “that is why, quite deliberately we called it a cup, rather than a prize or award,” explains Schwarz. “And it’s emphatically an opera competition, not a song competition,” adds his fellow-judge Barrie Kosky, director of Berlin’s Komische Oper. “That means that the impression you make when you walk on to the stage is going to count. It’s no good just making a beautiful noise. What opera needs now is singers who really engage with the text and singers who have stagecraft. By that I mean singers with rigorously trained bodies, at ease and fit enough to run across the stage and sing if that’s required.”
Touché – does he mean that opera singers need to watch their weight? Ever since Maria Callas’s crash diet and its disastrous vocal consequences in the Fifties, body size has been a hot topic in the business. As recently as last month, the Cuban-american soprano Lisette Oropesa – now as slender as a pencil – said she had been passed over for certain roles because she was “too fat”.
“It’s nothing to do with the issue of body size,” says Kosky. “Sure, there are a few roles like the consumptives Violetta and Mimi where being unusually fat would stretch credibility too far. But very large people can be wonderfully nimble and there’s no need for them to feel disqualified as long as they can move.”
Contestants have come from across the globe, with strong showings from South Africa, the Russian republics and eastern Europe. “Talent tends to comes through in waves,” says Schwarz, “and it’s usually caused by the presence of really good teaching – a few years ago there was a remarkable number of good singers coming out of Cluj-napoca in Romania for just that reason. The Bolshoi is doing well at the moment too. America gives out a constant flow, but they tend to suffer over here because they are schooled to project into its big opera houses, whereas the European houses are generally much smaller and require a somewhat different technical approach.”
Whether the Cup is needed or not, the Berlin heat held in January, which I observed, presented an encouragingly high standard – though it is sobering to consider how few of these terrific young performers will manage to sustain a good career in a hopelessly over-crowded profession. Many of them are already singing significant roles as members of opera companies’ young artists apprenticeship programmes, but all of them still have a lot to prove and winning a high-profile competition like this one could make the world of difference.
Many of them have fought hard to get this far: 27-year-old Kosovar Elbenita Kajtazi, a raven-haired beauty of a lyric soprano, grew up during the terrible war with Serbia and spent much of her early life as a refugee in Albania. Opera was something she first encountered through hearing Maria Callas on Youtube, and she hasn’t looked back since – she’s been on contract to German opera houses for the last four years and has now worked her way to the resident ensemble at the Hamburg State Opera. The final at Glyndebourne will be her first trip to Britain – until now, she’s found it impossible to get any sort of visa.
A darker horse is the bass-baritone Denis Milo. He’s Russian and Jewish, born in Moscow but raised in Berlin, where he had a career as a child star in musicals. Singing cured him of a bad stammer, but he remains something of a loner and outsider. “I keep screwing up,” he says. “The other day I came in a bar late” – and he’s reached the point after “too many crap roles” and several tickingsoff from management where he’s disillusioned and not sure he wants to carry on. “I have some other crazy banal entrepreneurial ideas I might try. Bitcoin, that sort of thing”.
But what a pity that would be, because he’s magical. Shuffling on to the platform in front of the judges, gruff and unkempt, he looks as though he’s just fallen out of bed with a hangover. Then he opens his mouth to sing the Count’s aria from Le Nozze di Figaro, and it’s like a light coming on – a brilliantly imaginative performance, dangerous, edgy and vivid. If he won, might he cast dodgy thoughts of Bitcoin aside? “Perhaps. Maybe winning is what I need.”
With so much talent on parade, how do the judges assess it? One overheard remark made by Barrie Kosky probably gives the game away: “I can’t fault her singing and she looks a million dollars. But I just wasn’t interested in her as a person.” The Glyndebourne Cup isn’t listening for good singers – they’ve found those already. It’s looking for shining stars.
‘It’s no good just making a beautiful noise. What opera needs now is singers who have stagecraft’