Look down the stone stairs behind the Royal Albert Hall and across the road, and you are staring at the red-brown, turreted Victorian block of the Royal College of Music (RCM). A motley conglomeration of sounds is probably drifting through its open windows: pianos, oboes, violins and, not least, singing. Here, the RCM’s Vocal and Opera Faculty has long been the training ground for some of the world’s finest talents.
In a profession that seems to become ever more complex, this department – small, selective and wielding considerable clout – nevertheless has to evolve with the times. At the sharp end of such developments is its recently appointed head of department, Audrey Hyland, the vocal coach who has been in post since last July: “It’s a big privilege and a big responsibility,” she says.
Her own relationship with the Royal College of Music goes back decades. After studying in her native Scotland and then at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and counting the legendary Lieder pianist Graham Johnson as her mentor, she began her career as a coach at the College, then moved to the Royal Academy of Music. In 2017 she came back to the RCM as deputy head of faculty.
Hyland still wields an unmistakable Highlands accent (“even after living in London for over three decades!” she says, laughing), together with a positive and tenacious attitude to life and work. Growing up by the banks of Loch Lomond, she had seemed likely to become a pianist, then “fell in love with the human voice and the physicality of singing” in her mid-teens, while playing for singing lessons. “I got the bug for the words, the storytelling, the poetry,” she recalls. Her role, she says, is to provide young singers with the tools to flourish, encompassing matters technical, musical, linguistic, psychological and more.
The world of music teaching has arguably been transformed in the last several decades, and not before time. “Kindness is at the core of what we do,” Hyland asserts. This is an antidote to what she sees as an historically entrenched “culture of fear” in the performing arts – fear of conductors, directors, teachers, even of fellow singers.
“I believe we can’t work in a fearful environment,” she insists. “We have to be in a safe one, so that everybody feels respected – and we have to remember how grateful we are to be lucky enough to do such work in this world. At the College, I think we all have shared priorities and we want to learn from one another.” For young singers to take risks and build confidence, she considers that individually they must feel seen, respected and supported.
She is adamant about resisting the pressure to fast-track promising voices into the profession before they are ready. Building true resilience with solid technical and musical foundations takes time and effort; and in an era when mental health concerns are widespread among young artists, Hyland points to the need to address their root causes. Keeping the department on the small side helps to allow each student plenty of individual attention.
Demand for those few places, however, is considerable. Across four weeks of auditions, held in London, internationally (including in China and the US), and online, three panels run in parallel and feed into a second round as Hyland and her colleagues assess between 600 and 800 applicants. Competition is intense: taken together, just over 100 singers in total study on the BMus, Masters and ArtDip Opera courses.
What does the department look for? Vocal potential must come first, and, Hyland says, “the absolute superstars” are easy to identify. But it takes more than vocal talent to become a professional singer; these students will need a fine balance of personality, motivation and self-awareness, qualities that will likely become evident in the second-round interviews.
The young artists will also need to learn about the profession’s realities, undertake sustained hard work, and have the maturity to deal with rejection, travel, the pressures of freelancing and the need to create their own opportunities. “We want to know what compels them to be a singer,” Hyland says. She feels that singing must stem from a deep inner necessity, tempered with an outlook that balances confidence and humility: “Gone are those diva days!”
Once in the College, they face an intense and varied curriculum encompassing what Hyland calls “a massive kaleidoscope” of skills. They have an hour and a half per week with their principal teacher, regular sessions with a repertoire coach focusing on style, languages and interpretation, coaching from opera specialists and classes in French, German, Italian and English song, as well as movement and stagecraft.
Hands-on performing experience is a vital part of all this. The RCM mounts as many as 500 performances a year in house, incuding three full-scale opera productions a year in the institution’s sleek, wooden-interiored Britten Theatre, with repertoire chosen to fit the particular singers involved. “We like to have a good variety,” Hyland says, “so that within a two-year opera course, they will have covered a wide range of languages and styles, from Handel or Monteverdi up to contemporary works and the central canon of repertoire. The choice is always guided by the students we have.”
Their involvement with contemporary music includes an ongoing collaboration with Tête à Tête, the pioneering festival of new opera led by Bill Bankes-Jones. Every two years, RCM composers are invited to propose 20–25-minute operas for it, responding to a given theme; this year’s is ‘Fantasies and Fairy Tales’, resulting in five projects that are being created specifically for RCM singers.
There’s an outreach element as well: a schools’ performance can invite local pupils to explore one of the new works, meet the composer and attend a performance, in some cases providing their first encounter with opera. It is part of a wider collaborative spirit in the College, which also extends across disciplines to joint projects with dancers from the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.
New music is not the only cutting edge on which to balance. The RCM is the proud possessor of a “performance simulator”, developed with its Centre for Performance Science: this ground-breaking technology, installed in a dedicated space, effects an acoustic transformation that allows students to practise performing in virtual versions of venues including Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall or the Royal Opera House, among others, complete with a visual simulation of the audience. “They can feel what it would be like to sing in these acoustics,” Hyland says. “It’s utterly amazing – a fantastic use of technology. Testing it out and feeling the differences of singing in these acoustics can help the singers to manage any anxieties that arise around these issues.”
But perhaps the most challenging moment for any young musician is the point of leaving college and taking first steps in the profession. “It’s pretty daunting for them,” Hyland acknowledges, “so throughout the course, we interweave preparation for auditions and, further into the course, mock auditions.” The RCM’s Creative Careers Centre, she says, is “something I wish had been available when I was a student! Besides working with students here, the centre is available to them for five years after they leave. They can come back and get advice on tax, visas, working abroad, writing a CV – all the practical aspects of being a singer that can get forgotten when you’re trying to learn French and German.”
Out in the big wide world, something is going right: RCM alumni regularly appear in young artist programmes at the world’s great opera houses, not least the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and, closer to home, the Jette Parker scheme at The Royal Opera. Resilience, Hyland says, is everything – and in a climate in which nothing is likely to grow easier soon, studying in a supportive environment can give the singing stars of tomorrow the best possible start. Look out for them coming soon to a theatre near you.
The Royal College of Music presents new operas in collaboration with Tête à Tête at the RCM’s Britten Theatre on 3rd–6th July.
See upcoming performances at the Royal College of Music.
See more about the RCM’s Vocal & Opera faculty.
This article was sponsored by the Royal College of Music.
