Four new music staff join the Royal Opera House's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme

Jette Parker Young Artists 2017-2018 (Photo Royal Opera House)

The Royal Opera House has announced the appointment of four music staff who will join the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme in September, selected from more than 119 applicants from 31 countries. The artists are Hong Kong-born British conductor Jonathan Lo, British conductor/répétiteur Patrick Milne, British conductor Thomas Payne and British conductor/répétiteur Edmund Whitehead.

The four join the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme this month along with the five singers new to the programme (announced earlier this year), Chilean soprano Yaritza Véliz, Chinese mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu, American countertenor Patrick Terry, Argentinean baritone Germán E Alcántara and Scottish-Iranian bass-baritone Michael Mofidian, and the six current Young Artists who move to the second year of the programme, Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina, South Korean tenor Konu Kim, South Korean soprano Haegee Lee, British baritone Dominic Sedgwick, American soprano Jacquelyn Stucker and Israeli director Noa Naamat.

The four conductors and répétiteurs were selected after an audition process which involved preparing a complete act of an opera of their own choosing, along with excerpts from Falstaff (Verdi), Lohengrin (Wagner), La bohème (Puccini) and Salome (Strauss), both as conductors and as répétiteurs/vocal coaches.

Full details from the Royal Opera House website.