SPO's new Patron, David Butt Philip, explains how we serve young singers and the local community

Picture: Andrew Staples

When you’re studying singing, and when you start working professionally, it sometimes feels as if you’ll be a “promising young singer” forever. You feel like a child waiting to be invited to sit at the grownups table. Then one day, before you realise it, you start getting asked to give advice to “young singers” or to coach them and give masterclasses. You look in the mirror and feel like nothing’s changed, but somewhere along the line you’ve become one of the grownups.

Much to my surprise, this started happening to me around six or seven years ago, and a couple of years later I was first approached by Tricia Ninian to come and give a masterclass for St Paul’s Opera.

I rather enjoyed it, and (again, much to my surprise) they seemed to as well! It became a regular engagement, and now here we are, embarking on an exciting new chapter together. I’ve never been a patron of anything before (except perhaps my local pub), and again it feels like something a real grownup should be doing, as opposed to me, but I’ve started to come to terms with the fact that that’s just what most days feel like once you get into your forties!

Small, community-based, groups run for the love of it by enthusiastic amateurs, like St Paul’s Opera, are absolutely crucial for developing talent. Especially these days when opportunities to perform operatic roles professionally at the start of one’s career are desperately scarce, even more so than they were when I left college 15 years ago. You can learn a huge amount at a conservatoire, or from a great singing teacher or coach. Technique, style, musicality, language skills.

But one of the hardest things to learn in opera is how to actually perform a role, on stage, under pressure. Because you have to learn by doing it yourself, repeatedly, in front of an audience. Even the luckiest of us probably only get to do this a handful of times in over the course of maybe six years of full-time study.

I didn’t begin to feel truly comfortable and confident on stage until I was a young artist at the Royal Opera House, by which time I was already in my early 30s, and that’s because it was the first time I had ever had the opportunity to do it regularly for real, to build those skills and that confidence.

So the beauty of a group like SPO is that we can do two things at once. Provide vital performance and development opportunities to singers at an early stage of their career, which they might otherwise struggle to find, AND offer something wonderful to the local community, that they can feel is their own, and enjoy the results of everyone’s spirit and hard work. What could be more joyous?

It’s been particularly striking to me how the standard of singers I see in the masterclasses has risen each time. This year was absolutely the best yet. So I have no doubt that this summer’s production of Albert Herring (one of my favourite operas, and one of the first in which I ever sang a principal role!) will be a great success.

The energy and enthusiasm of Tricia, Pan and the rest of the team is an inspiration to us all, and I hope very much you will all be able to come along and enjoy the show. In the meantime, “I’m full of happiness to be here in your midst on such a day as this!”