Michael Ronan / Vélemények

When it comes to sex and death, timing is everything. The Royal Academy of Music is one of Europe’s leading conservatoires, with a renowned opera program for young singers whose stars are in the ascendant. This autumn they offered – across two casts – a double bill of Maurice Ravel’s mischievous farce “L’heure Espagnole” and Giacomo Puccini’s story of probate chicanery “Gianni Schicchi,” both directed by Stephen Barlow. As he notes in the program, what connects both pieces is that time is running out for the parties concerned: Concepción struggles to find a moment for an assignation; Buoso’s grasping family want to change his will before his fortune is given to a Friary.

Michael Ronan takes the £10,000 prize in a night celebrating some of the Academy’s best talent across varied disciplines. The 2022 Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Prize, one of the highlights in a year of concerts and commissions marking the Academy’s 200th anniversary, has been won by bass-baritone Michael Ronan. The final round in this prestigious competition took place at Wigmore Hall on 26 May in front of a live audience and a panel of eminent judges - composer Eleanor Alberga OBE, violinist Tasmin Little OBE, and conductor and the Academy’s Richard Rodney Bennett Professor of Music, Ryan Wigglesworth.