Hugh Cutting wants to do it all: more recitals, more opera, theatre and even film. But right now he’s confined to a small dressing room in the bowels of the Coliseum with only a few minutes to spare before the dextrous Vito comes in to fit him with wig, makeup and moustache for his role as the social-climbing heartbreaker Arsace in Handel’s comedy Partenope. “It doesn’t take long,” he explains. “The difficult bit is the moustache as it’s in two parts and it’s the hardest thing to keep on, but Vito’s the best in the business and he has some very good glue.”
It’s time to crack on before the BBC New Generation Artist (2022-24), first countertenor winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award, the International Opera Awards’ Rising Star of 2025 and self-confessed “blabbermouth” is professionally obliged to stop moving his lips.
Before that there’s a lot to talk about. 2025 has been a busy year: Written on Skin in Berlin and Rome, Orfeo in Dallas, Rodelinda at Garsington, a European tour of Theodora with Ensemble Jupiter, a BBC Proms debut, not to mention Artist in Residence at Wigmore Hall and this week – moustache and all – his English National Opera debut.
“I love everything I’m doing at the moment, but,” he says, lurching decisively for the future, “it feels like I’m not brand new any more, so I want to be quite precise about what I do next.” That doesn”t necessarily mean particular roles or directors, but it does mean being guided by his passion for good storytelling.
“If opera is going to survive in any meaningful way, we have to think more deeply about how we tell stories on stage, beyond big dresses, divas and stuff. Because of Netflix and other streaming services, you know, Goodwill Hunting or Saltburn, all these really effective films at the click of a button, I think it’s important that we just focus on stories in opera and characters. Of course, the voice is the vehicle for characterisation, so that’s what I’m wanting to build. I mean it’s nothing new, just telling human stories, human emotions. I don’t want to do things just for the fireworks,” says the man whose career has gone off like a rocket in the last 18 months. “I want to be doing things which feel meaningful.”
So where does Partenope, with its Venn diagram of unrequited love and mistaken identity, sit on the fireworks-to-meaningful spectrum?
“It’s really, really meaningful,” he says with genuine affection. After all it’s a piece he knows very well, having toured it around Europe for two years with Les Arts Florissants. “It’s a Handel comedy and Christopher Alden’s production is very much aware of that. But it’s funny, people have said to me ‘If it’s comedy, is it at all deep?’ But I think comedy is the deepest thing you can have. I had an amazing English Literature teacher when I was in sixth form, who really changed my whole worldview – about everything, really – but particularly about art and its constructedness and about comedy, especially. I remember him saying, of course comedy’s about laughs, but it’s also about connection between people. Why do we laugh at things? Why do we laugh when we watch something together? What are we trying to do when we laugh? I think it’s such an interesting question. This show is a comedy in that sense. It’s sort of farcical and there’s obviously ridiculous things that happen: I’m covered in toilet roll at one point, Will Thomas appears in a massive dress and Katie Bray is dressed as a man. But it’s so heartfelt.
“My character, Arsace, is such a gift to play, because he has such a massive arc that he goes through. Although he makes mistakes, he’s a wonderful character to bring to life. Rather than being absurd, comedy gets to the nub of something which is very real.”
Keeping it real means the challenging task of bringing the detailed work of the rehearsal studio into a vast space like the Coliseum. “I always find the last two weeks of rehearsal challenging, because those are the only weeks we have on stage before we put the show on, so obviously, a director’s attention has to be in large part due to literally getting it looking correct on the set.”
Even with amenable directors and movement coaches, “it’s our responsibility ultimately to to be happy with what we’re doing and to work out how to be happier.” Muscle memory from his teenage years of musical theatre, Monty Python impressions and stagecraft at the RCM notwithstanding, for Cutting this means relying on trusted mentors like his teacher, the mezzo and director Sally Burgess, and mezzo and director Lucy Schaufer. “Much as I love acting, I'm not trained, really, so I want as much feedback as possible.
I think it's a process that I want to be very aware of personally and to be humble about,” he laughs, “in the sense that I want people to tell me when it’s shit! And of course when it's going well. I think there is this culture of people being very careful with singers and saying, oh it’s wonderful. Of course, you sound fantastic in the space etc but actually I’d rather be told, when stuff isn’t working, because our voices should be working at this stage – if you're working in an opera house, that is your job.” He talks about “layering”, about borrowing techniques from film acting and theatre to create believable characters. “We have to build these stories well otherwise I don’t think people are going to be that interested – or they won’t be as interested as they could be.”
Of the five roles he’s performed this year, the Boy in Sir George Benjamin’s Written on Skin emerges as a clear favourite. “It’s a tight opera – 90 minutes – and a very intimate one. I think that’s at the top of my list as the role I want to do as much as I can… especially while I still look like a child!” Boyish self-deprecation aside, it’s the Boy’s character arc and the vocal and dramatic resonances of the role he finds so compelling. Naturally he’s gravitating towards more Handel, having sung Unulfo in Garsington’s Rodelina with his “idol” Tim Mead, and he’ll do it again in Sante Fe next summer with Iestyn Davies. His favourite Handel work is Theodora, which he's just been touring with Thomas Dunford’s Ensemble Jupiter as Didymus, a role he’s keen to reprise.
But, he concedes, all in good time. “The thing with roles is that you have an idea in your head about what you would like to do one day, but I think it’s fine to not be suited to some roles and to be more suited to others at different points in your life. And I would only ever want to do roles where I felt I was believable enough. If I did Caesar tomorrow, I don’t think that it would suit me in a way, because I want to have a bit more weight, maybe dramatically, and in my voice. I want to build towards things and not do them too early. Everything in its own time.”
Cutting’s time has definitely arrived, and on what seems like a new wave of popularity for the countertenor voice. To what does he attribute the burgeoning supply and variety? “I think the whole world is blowing up in terms of identity and how we think about individuals. You know, we have a very individual focused culture, for better or worse, plus my instinct is that technique is becoming more accessible.” But there’s another part of it. “Honestly, there’s still a kind of novelty, even now, especially with the really high sopranista voice, which is maybe more of a European thing, but it makes for interesting casting choices here and there.”
There is, apparently, a rarified zone of Instagram devoted to the fetishisation of falsetto as an extreme sport. However, for Cutting, it all comes down to whether or not a character is a believable human being on stage. “That’s hard to do with falsetto sometimes, because it’s so far from your natural speaking voice. But you have to do your work properly. I don't like this idea of someone swanning in and doing whatever the hell they want just because they've got a high male voice.”
There isn’t much time when Cutting isn’t singing, and even going home (he has recently moved closer to his family in Oxford) means “bashing through” songs from Wicked and West Side Story with his brother, Guy. Stillness is a skill he is having to teach himself. ”I’m quite getting into Zen Buddhism. My dad gave me the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and so in my time off I’m trying to sort of rebalance.” Vocal rest is important, too. “I need to be stricter with myself in terms of just not getting too excited and talking all the time to people that I really love.” He plays tennis every now and again and is very fond of church spotting. “I love a church – my favourite poem is Church Going by Philip Larkin – and just being in calm spaces. Stillness is what I like, really.”
Which is just as well. In the week when he turns 29, Cutting may, in Larkin’s words “be surprising a hunger in himself to be more serious”... but right now it’s time for Vito to apply that moustache.
