Small-scale opera performances are enjoying something of a renaissance in Sydney, and this mini-festival of works featuring three graduating artists from the Opera Australia Young Artist Program is a particularly fine example.

Presented over four days, it comprises two works performed on alternate evenings at The Church – Judith Neilson’s restored 19th-century Gothic building in Alexandria.

They are Britten’s Tenor, a world premiere featuring tenor Elias Wilson with Music Director and pianist Jem Herbert, and the 1958 Poulenc/Cocteau monodrama La Voix humaine, in which soprano Chelsea Burns is accompanied by OA’s Head of Young Artists Francis Greep.

Given the complexity of these two works, the fact these young performers don’t come a cropper is worthy of praise alone; the fact they excel is even more impressive. Their career readiness is evident and a testament to the efforts of Greep and the teachers who have mentored the singers throughout the 18-month program.

Expertly staged by NIDA’s Head of Directing, Ben Schostakowski, both works boast fully fledged production values – Susie Henderson’s projection designs, Carlos Johnson’s props and Rebecca Ritchie’s wigs and wardrobe providing complex and coherent scenographic solutions to each.

A nautical environment is punctuated by three dressmaker’s dummies in various costumes worn throughout Britten’s Tenor, while a richly furnished bedroom with dressing table and animated sheer curtains creates the highly realistic “murder room” Cocteau called for in La Voix humaine.

Michael Burden and Elias Wilson in Opera Australia’s Britten’s Tenor. Photo © Justin McLean

Wilson devised Britten’s Tenor after seeing Stuart Skelton perform Peter Grimes with Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2019. It should therefore come as no surprise to learn that Go there! from Act Two Scene Two of the opera is the centrepiece of this hour-long exploration of the relationship between composer Benjamin Britten and his life partner, tenor Peter Pears.

Elias, who recently made his mainstage debut as Monsieur Triquet in OA’s Eugene Onegin, was born to sing Britten. He possesses the vocal agility needed to negotiate the monologue’s demanding interval leaps and melismatic word painting while never compromising its parlando style.

Elias’s phrasing bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Pears, with comparable clarity and diction. His timbre, however, is mellower, making it a pleasure to listen to during an extended, uninterrupted performance like this.

Since Britten and Pears’ private letters were published in 2016 under the title My Beloved Man, several theatrical treatments have attempted to “climb up a wall and peer into the secret garden of two giants”, as actor and director Fiona Shaw put it in her foreword to the collection of 365 letters.

Among them, Sue Blundell’s 2017 play Tell Me the Truth About Love paired their correspondence with selections of Britten’s music in a three-hander to mark the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised sex between consenting males in the UK.

Noting that Britten and Pears had written many of these letters prior to the 1957 Wolfenden Report, which paved the way for legislative reform, composer Conor Mitchell created his own song cycle, Look Both Ways, for the 2022 Cheltenham Festival, setting some of the letters to an original score for tenor, baritone and piano trio.

Britten’s Tenor differs in that the entire vocal and dramatic burden is carried by Wilson, with a guest appearance by countertenor Michael Burden, who joins him for a captivating reading of Canticle II Abraham and Isaac and returns as Grimes’ silent apprentice John during the Go There! monologue.

Examining Britten’s works through a queer lens, Elias draws parallels between the overt expressions of love in the letters and the subtext he finds in the libretti of Erix Crozier, W.H. Auden and Montagu Slater.

Changing costume as he switches roles, he navigates his way from the ambiguous Captain Edward Fairfax Vere in Billy Budd to Grimes and back again, singing selections from the song cycle On this Island along the way.

It’s a Herculean task, with works never intended to be heard in such close succession sung back to back. However, Elias rises to the challenge, and just when you think his stamina might wane, he draws on all his reserves, powering through without missing a note.

Chelseas Burns in Opera Australia’s La Voix Humaine. Photo © Justin McLean

Chelsea Burns delivers an equally potent performance as the scorned Elle in La Voix humaine, leaping back to life with a gasp after we first find her prostrate on an unmade bed, her head wrapped in a sheet like one of Magritte’s Lovers.

With her perfectly controlled vibrato and even tone, she makes light work of Poulenc’s score, a flicker of modern-day defiance added to the anxiety usually associated with the role.

The dramatic pacing relies heavily on fermatas, the length of which is determined by the singer. Here the musical preparation is spot on, with Burns and Greep in sync throughout.

Cocteau preferred Poulenc’s adaptation to his original 1928 play because the score gave voice to the unheard lover at the other end of the line, and the interplay between Greep’s accompaniment and Burns’ vocal performance accurately captures the rhythms of a real conversation – the piano’s act of musical ‘ventriloquism’ rendering the exchange eerily complete, despite one half of it remaining unheard.

It is remarkable how prescient La Voix humaine was in questioning the authenticity of interpersonal communication and relationships in the face of emerging technology. Cocteau’s telephone simultaneously connects and isolates, disembodying the voice and anticipating what Jacques Derrida would later describe as “the spectral” or “the revenant” – the voice suspended between life and the afterlife.

Director Benjamin Schostakowski seems to play with this notion, leaving it unclear whether the revenant is Elle or the ghostly voice of a dead relationship. This ambiguity is reinforced by projection designer Susie Henderson, who gradually unveils a starry sky suggesting Elle’s final passage into the heavens.

The strides OA’s Young Artists have made since last November’s Russian Song Recital are to be lauded. Burns is heading to Milan, Jem Herbert to London, and the remaining members of their cohort have also secured professional engagements.

This level of success is no accident. The revived Opera Australia Young Artist Program is the enduring legacy of former Artistic Director Jo Davies’ short-lived tenure with the national company, and in the hands of Francis Greep, it is one of the most fruitful lifelines for the art form in this country.

Opera Australia presents the Young Artists in Concert at the Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House on 2 August.