Anna Patalong named as new chief executive of British Youth Opera

Mozart: Don Giovanni - Anna Patalong - Nevill Holt Opera, 2021 (Photo: Lloyd Winters)

Congratulations to soprano Anna Patalong who has been named as the new chief executive of British Youth Opera (BYO) in succession to Nicola Candish. Anna takes up her appointment in April, but Anna joined BYO as a development consultant in 2019, joining the organisation’s senior management team and shaping its fundraising strategy. Prior to this, she was part of BYO as a young singer between 2007 and 2010.

She has previously described her experiences with BYO as being like ‘an apprenticeship to the opera world’ and credits it for both building her career in opera and securing the funding that made her further training possible. In 2018, Anna was a co-founder of SWAP'ra [see my article], an organisation formed by five women working in opera to both help encourage change and to provide a supportive platform in the face of a collective frustration with the unconscious gender bias in the industry.

We last saw Anna as a passionate and very human Donna Anna in Nevill Holt Opera's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni last year [see my review], and digging through the archives one of her first appearances on the blog was as Serpetta in Mozart's La finta giardiniera at the Buxton Festival back in 2013, which I described as a complete delight and Despina on acid! [see my review]. So, I hope that the new appointment does not mean she plans to retire from the opera stage just yet.

Nicola Candish, having led BYO since 2019 is now moving on to become senior manager of performing arts at Durham University.

Full information from the BYO website.