Review: CENTER STAGE at Opera Theatre Of St. Louis

Opera Theatre of St. Louis presented its Center Stage evening on Tuesday, and it was a glorious capstone to the company’s 2026 festival.  It featured the best young opera talent in America. 

Out of 1,139 video applications, with 490 subsequent live auditions, the best 28 singers were selected to participate in OTSL’s Young Artists program—nine weeks of intensive training in all operatic skills—voice, acting, movement, comedy, repertoire, and career management.  The young talent gets to perform in supporting roles and choruses alongside established professionals in the company’s major productions.   

Tuesday night was where they got to show off all they’ve learned!! 

What a glorious, thrilling success the whole thing was!  The stage was chock-a-block with musical talent:  twenty-seven world-class singers, scores of members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.  That’s a stage packed full of brilliant folks singing and playing their hearts out for us.  They presented twelve scenes from operas throughout history (18th through 20st centuries)—tragic and comic, “grand” and verismo, romantic, serious, silly, and drop-dead gorgeous.  Just for kicks they tossed in three great numbers from classic Broadway musicals.  And the overture!  Wow, that overture!

The house is nearly packed, the orchestra is tuning.  OTSL’s Principal Conductor, the brilliant Daniela Candillari takes the podium, raises her baton and … AWAY THEY GO!  It's the overture to Smetana’s The Bartered Bride.   Last year Maestra Candillari and her gang gave us that rollicking overture from Candide.  It’s always been my favorite, but she showed us wonderful things in it I’d never heard before.  Now, the Bartered Bride overture is, yes, a great overture.  But once again she makes it all fresh, new, scintillating.  Strings becaoe the rapid wings of bees, the sound sweetly flowing, the dynamics subtle and clear.  Ms. Candillari gives you an overture that is, in itself, worth the price of admission.

The selection of opera scenes is, perhaps, a bit more traditional than last year’s.  Composers were all familiar: Rossini, Puccini, Donizetti, Bellini, Mascagni, Bizet, Gounod, Mozart, Strauss.  The only opera I’d never heard of was Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi—a re-setting of Romeo and Juliet into the 13th Century political conflicts between Guelphs and Ghibellines.  I kind of liked last year’s occasional curiosity.

All of these scenes were, of course, sung in the original language.  This is so appropriate, since these young singers are going out into an opera world where the original languages are the international de facto standard.  And a great many young American singers get their real start in foreign countries.

With the large orchestra on stage the dramatic action is limited to the apron.  But that suffices.  Stage Directors for the scenes include OTSL veterans (Seán Curran and Patricia Racette),  OTSL Assistant Stage Directors (Diane Machin and Anna Theodosakis), and  Apprentice Stage Directors (Paige Cameron and Erica Ferguson).  So the evening fosters not just young singers, but young stage directors as well.  Ms.  Candillari leads the orchestra for most of the scenes, but Steven Aguiló-Arbues and Darwin Aquino take the baton for two of them.

With such a vast roster of talent I’ll not attempt to give details.  I just want to convince you that this is not just a “student recital”.  This is a top-flight evening of disciplined, professional opera.  It flows smoothly and swiftly.  Not a second is wasted.  To me this is the most exciting evening in the whole festival. 

I must mention a few individual singers who particularly impressed me. 

Veronica Siebert is a Richard Gaddes Festival Artist.  She gave us that light and charming Stephano in OTSL’s Romeo and Juliet.  Once again she dons the trousers to sing Romeo in Bellini’s adaptation.  Such fierce operatic passion!  And she dies so beautifully.  (“Die again, Veronica!”)

Shyhelm Selvan Hinnant, another Gaddes Festival Artist, is a tall and graceful bass-baritone.  (He sang the Police Sergeant in OTSL’s Pirates of Penzance.)  Here he sings the Prince’s tutor in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Lord Capulet in I Capuleti, Dr. Bartolo in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Figaro in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro—all done with his characteristic ease. 

Vincius Costa, also a Gaddes Festival Artist, displays a powerful deep bass voice as Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and (with just the right beard) he gives us a deliciously evil Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust.

Mezzo-soprano Imara Ashton sings the stony-hearted aunt in Puccini’s Suor Angelica with utterly commanding authority, her steady power rising beautifully as the scene progresses.  Saane Aziza Halaholo, as Suor Angelica, breaks our hearts with lyrical passion as she learns that her illegitimate son is dead.

Cole Bellamy brings a remarkably powerful and expressive baritone to the roles of the wicked Scarpio (in Puccini’s Tosca) and Tony in West Side Story.

Landry Allen (tenor) is simply perfect as Fritz in Mascagni’s light comedy, L’amico Fritz.  Such a sweet voice, smooth throughout its range.

The three Broadway shows presented reflect the need for young professional singers to be comfortable in the more populist genres.  But I had problems with the selections made for the evening:

• “Cell Block Tango”, from Chicago, shows six women convicts telling about why they killed their husbands.  (“He had it coming!  He had it coming!”)  It’s energetic and full of laughs, but it’s more shouting than singing.  It doesn’t display the splendid operatic skills these young singers have.
• “Tonight” from West Side Story is an exciting scene, but it had some tenors in the chorus really straining toward the low end of their range.
• “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, from Carousel.  Now I know that this song has been voted Class Song by thousands of graduating high-school seniors.  Musically its gradually swelling chorus is very moving, but the lyrics?  Oscar Hammerstein at his most insipid.   (Maybe it’d be better in Italian?  Anyway my class chose “For All We Know [we may never meet again].”) 

But overall the evening was a resounding success  The entire cast and crew, grinning in well-justified glee, were drowned in cheers and bravos and applause.  Eventually the Young Artists were permitted to retire to dressing rooms—and then to join the audience in champagne toasts under the gala tents on the beautiful lawn.

Alas it was only for one performance.  (All that work!  All that talent!)   But it will come again next year!

(Photo by Eric Woolsey)

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