One of the opera world’s best-kept secrets, British Youth Opera’s annual productions in association with Southbank Sinfonia offer the chance to hear the next generation of opera stars. Selected through nationwide auditions from over 400 singers, British Youth Opera “showcase the cream of young talent after music college, but just before the agents swoop” (The Times).

Paul Bunyan – Benjamin Britten’s first opera, a collaboration with W H Auden – has an easy-going musical style that pre-empts that of Bernstein and Sondheim. With a cast of 44 singers, it tells of the founding of America by a motley band of pioneers, led by the folklore hero ‘as tall as the Empire State’.