Teatro Real pushes boat out for the "TOscars"

The International Opera Awards in Madrid

Nardus Williams named Rising Star of the Year

On Monday night, the tenth “edition” of the International Opera Awards - or the “TOscars” as I cheekily dubbed them in 2013 - held its first prize-giving ceremony outside London. The 2021 winner of Opera House of the Year, Madrid’s Teatro Real (Royal Theatre), put on the kind of show that has largely eluded the awards until now. Indeed, the Real’s artistic director, Joan Matabosch, set new standards for the event, putting the entire resources of his theatre at the IOA’s disposal: chorus, orchestra, four soloists from the company’s imminent new production of Bellini’s La sonnambula, its world-class back-stage and front-of-house workforce. This was an evening of glitz - am array of fabulous chandeliers adorning the stage - and glamour - Nardus Williams, winner of the Rising Star Award, effortlessly walked off with that (unofficial) accolade - while Petroc Trelawney, the admired Radio 3 presenter, “emceed” the occasion with his usual sang-froid and velvet baritone speaking voice. Trelawney has, rightly, been a fixture, at the “TOscars” since the third year, and his unflappable manner even survived the surprise appearance of the Designer of the Year’s manager, whom he understandably mistook for the award-winner, Michael Levine.

But that was the evening’s only obvious glitch, and there were plenty of other surprises, mostly of the nice variety. I must declare an interest since I am one of the Awards smallish “short-list” panel, among a jury of almost 50 opera directors, administrators, singers, artist managers, and critics. One of the categories, Opera magazine’s Readers’ Award has an “electorate” of thousands. This year it was the US-based, Samoan tenor, Pene Pati - basking in raves for his debut recording on Warner Classics - who impressed that discerning crowd most: his joy at being chosen, relayed on a specially recorded video, from among nominees including Jonas Kaufmann, Asmik Grigorian, Lisette Oropesa and Michael Spyres (winner of the best solo album, his remarkable BariTenor selection of baritone and tenor arias for Erato) was palpable. Pati has a big smile and persona that lights up any stage, not unlike like the late Luciano Pavarotti.

Michael Spyres receiving the award for Best Solo Album from velvet-voiced Emcee, Petroc Trelawney

Perhaps the evening’s biggest surprise was one of the last awards announced: that of Opera House(s) of the Year, this time a discretionary decision to honour the achievements of two beleaguered companies in Ukraine, the Opera and Ballet Theatres of Lviv and Odesa. Video footage showed us the jaw-dropping beauty of these buildings which have continued to perform while under attack from Russian aggression. In this of all years, no-one could argue with that result, and quite a few present will surely add Lviv and Odesa to their post-hostilities operatic bucket lists.

British opera lovers in the audience and around the world - the “TOscars” were streamed for the first time on YouTube - will have been delighted by Dame Janet Baker’s recognition for Lifetime Achievement, one of the greatest singer-actors the UK has produced, her gifts still remembered vividly today, even though it is 40 years since she last stood on an opera stage. Her gracious acceptance was conveyed to the Teatro Real on film, and her presence, the quality that distinguished so many of her unforgettable stage personae - Handel’s Julius Caesar, Gluck’s Orfeo, Mozart’s Vitellia and Idamante, Purcell and Berlioz’s Dido - still radiates from the screen.

Daniele Rustioni: Conductor of the Year

For me, personally, the most pleasurable win was Daniele Rustioni’s naming as Conductor of the Year. I still maintain that the 38-year-old Milanese was the best qualified candidate to succeed Antonio Pappano at Covent Garden, a predominantly “Italian” house, whatever the RO orchestra thinks. Rustioni’s stature continues to grow: at Opéra de Lyon where he is music director until the end of next season, at the Met where he took musical charge of a new Rigoletto this season, at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera for his first performances of Les Troyens earlier this year, and his thrilling revival of Macbeth for the Royal Opera, all confirmed his credentials as perhaps the most gifted opera conductor of his generation. His career is on an upward trajectory, no question.

Two of the singers crowned with laurels have worked with Rustioni in Lyon, the French lyric baritone, Stéphane Degout, male singer of the year, sang a memorable Marquis de Posa in the five-act French version of Verdi’s Don Carlos Rustioni conducted in his theatre in 2018, while earlier this year, Spyres dipped his toes into Wagnerian waters, singing the male title role in Rustioni’s concert performance of Tristan und Isolde’s central act. At the post-awards reception, Spyres enthused to me about his next record project, an album exploring French “grand opéra” influences on Wagner.

The brilliant coloratura soprano, Sabine Devielhe, was named female singer of the year against stiff competition from very different voice-types, including the Lithuanian dramatic soprano, Ausrine Stundyte, who attended the ceremony, the Italian Mozart-Verdi soprano, Federica Lombardi, the French mezzo, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, and the South Africa diva, Pretty Yende.

D’Oustrac, of course, starred as the desperate lover, “Elle” - both a name and an “everywoman” - finishing a relationship by telephone in Poulenc’s musical monodrama, La Voix Humaine. Laurent Pelly’s disarmingly simple staging, with his surreal mise-en-scene was a deserving Production of the Year, one of Glyndebourne’s best showings of recent seasons, and a vindication of the tight budgeting the festival has introduced since losing millions during the pandemic.

Nicholas Payne presented the Award for Leadership by ENO’s Annilese Miskimmon

Glyndebourne, or rather its “levelling up” touring wing, is one of the casualties of the reckless, Arts Council England cuts, which appear to have fallen disproportionately on opera, leading one to think that someone in that now discredited organisation bears a grudge on the art-form. Two award presenters, soprano Susan Bullock and English National Opera’s artistic director made impassioned speeches on behalf of the UK’s beleaguered opera companies in the presence of the British ambassador to Spain, Hugh Elliott, who had to endure Opera’s editor, John Allison’s description of his masters as the UK’s “Brexit government” as he presented the Production of the Year award to Glyndebourne’s Stephen Langridge. Miskimmon was in Madrid, both as a nominee in the Production of the Year category (for her ENO production of The Handmaid’s Tale) and to present Nicholas Payne, outgoing CEO of Opera Europa and a former senior executive with no fewer than four British companies, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, the Royal Opera and ENO, with the award for Leadership.

Xabier Anduaga and Sabina Puertolas sing the duet from Lucia di Lammermoor

Holding these International Opera Awards in one of the most highly regarded - and generously-funded - European theatres only threw the plight of UK companies into stark relief - the French government and the City of Berlin each spend three times more on a the Opéra de Paris and three Berlin houses than the entire Arts Council budget for opera in the UK. Madrid showed what could be done, not only by hosting the “TOscars”, but by showcasing the chorus and orchestra of the Teatro Real, conducted by José Miguel Pérez Sierra, and rising international stars soon to appear in the company’s new Bellini production, among them tenor Xabier Anduaga and soprano Sabina Puertolas in arias from Zarzuelas, and the love duet from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Williams, waving the flag for British opera, sang a sumptuous account of the Countess’s Act 3 aria from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, a role in which she has been delighting audiences this year, both at Glyndebourne’s summer festival, and on its (probably) soon-to-be-disbanded Tour. Talent like Willams’s has been carefully nurtured by ENO and Glyndebourne. Our philistine Arts Council, representing a vindictive government, laying waste to the arts in the UK, is about to destroy all that.

A full list of award winners appears below

OPERA COMPANIES OF THE YEAR
Lviv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre
jointly with
Odesa Opera and Ballet Theatre

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
Dame Janet Baker

CONDUCTOR
Daniele Rustioni 

DIRECTOR 
Stefan Herheim 

DESIGNER
Michael Levine

OPERA MAGAZINE READERS' AWARD
Pene Pati

FEMALE SINGER
Sabine Devieilhe

MALE SINGER 
Stéphane Degout

RISING STAR
Nardus Williams

FESTIVAL

Santa Fe Opera

WORLD PREMIERE
Defoort: The Time of our Singing (La Monnaie De Munt)

NEW PRODUCTION
Glyndebourne: La Voix humaine/Les Mamelles de Tirésias (c. Robin Ticciati, d. Laurent Pelly)

REDISCOVERED WORK
Dallapiccola: Ulisse (Oper Frankfurt)

GOOD GOVERNANCE INSTITUTE LEADERSHIP AWARD

Nicholas Payne

RECORDING (COMPLETE OPERA)

Offenbach: Le Voyage dans la Lune (Bru Zane

RECORDING (SOLO RECITAL)

Michael Spyres: BariTenor (Erato)

DIGITAL OPERA
Upload (Dutch National Opera)

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES & IMPACT 
Foundation Studio, Cape Town Opera 

 PHILANTHROPY
Aline Foriel-Destezet

SUSTAINABILITY
Gothenburg Opera