Former Jette Parker Artists return to the Royal Opera House on 20 and 21 April 2027 for a retrospective marking the programme's twenty-fifth year.
The Royal Opera House started its young artists company in September 2001 with six singers. Conductors, répétiteurs and pianists were added the following year and stage directors the year after that, and in 2006 it took the name it is still known by, after the donor whose foundation funds it. The principle has not changed in twenty-five years: two years inside the company, coached by the people running it, covering and performing real roles on the Main Stage and in the Linbury rather than in a studio.
What comes out of it is most of a generation of British opera. Singers who joined at twenty-four now return to the house as principals, and the programme has become the most reliable route from a conservatoire to a career on this stage. It has also widened what the pipeline looks like, adding observerships, short courses and commissions for people who would not otherwise reach an audition room at Covent Garden at all.
Former artists return with guests on Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 April 2027 for the retrospective, two nights and no more. The interest of an evening like this is the arithmetic: everyone on the platform was once the least experienced person in the building, and the audience gets to hear what twenty-five years of that decision produced. Two nights, and no more of them planned.