Aussie soprano, aged 25, scores at Plácido Domingo’s Covent Garden competition for budding opera talent.

A bare stage, an orchestra of 80, a conductor of enormous operatic standing and an expectant and knowledgeable audience of some 2,500 strong would be a daunting prospect for anyone.  But for 11 finalists, this was what they had to face on Sunday evening to stake their claim to one of the prizes on offer in this years’ Operalia competition at London’s Royal Opera House. You would expect that level of examination to sort the wheat from the chaff and so it did. The first three singers came and went with hardly a ripple, until Queensland-born soprano Kiandra Howarth arrived and filled the stage with her performance of Juliette’s aria Amour, ranime mon courage from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.

“My purpose in Operalia is to help identify not only the best voices of today, but also to discover those singers whose personalities, characters and powers of interpretation show that they have the potential to become complete artists,” says conductor and inspiration behind the competition, Plácido Domingo. It was that ability to communicate beyond the orchestra that made the difference for Howarth and won her...