IN JANUARY the Royal Opera House announced the new slate of Jette Parker artists. With its five year-long positions, the Jette Parker Young Artist programme is a sought-after destination among emerging opera stars. Of the winners this year, not a single singer from Italy won a spot. Indeed, the home country of opera was not even among the applicants’ five most common home countries. The top spots were instead taken by America, Britain, South Korea, Russia and Australia. “There just aren’t many young Italian singers around,” says David Gowland, the programme’s artistic director. Of the Jette Parker’s 440 applicants for this year’s position, only 18 were from Italy. Last year, Italians were also meagrely represented among the applicants, and none won a spot. The scenario repeated itself at last year’s Cardiff Singer of the World competition, which featured an impressive range of nationalities, including one singer from the Democratic Republic of Congo and three from South Korea. At the Operalia Competition last year, another Wimbledon of the opera trade, the finals featured one South Korean and two South Africans along with Americans, Europeans, and singers from New Zealand and Australia. But, again, no Italian. New York’s Metropolitan Opera has an Italian in its young artist programme—but he is a repetiteur, a pianist accompanying singers.

While classical music has for centuries broken down ethnic barriers, opera singing— especially the popular fare like Tosca and La Traviata—used to be the domain of Italians. Luciano Pavarotti was a global celebrity, of course, but names like Renata Tebaldi, Mirella Freni, Renata Scotto and Carlo Bergonzi likewise excited operagoers. Aidan Lang, the Seattle Opera’s general director, argues that highly ambitious Eastern Europeans have appeared on stage in the past couple of decades. “The opera market has become much more competitive for singers, and the Eastern European singers have very little airs,” he notes. Where some opera singers save their voices during rehearsals, “they sing out at every rehearsal and consider it an honour to sing in your house.”

The fierce new competition seems to have caught Italians by surprise. Ernesto Palacio, a Peruvian tenor and veteran artist manager, has noticed the change during several decades living in Italy. “There are good voices in Italy,” he says, “but many of them think a good voice is enough and don’t want to learn the other aspects such as acting.” With the proliferation of opera simulcasts, opera singers are expected to act well and look good too. Despite his glorious voice, Pavarotti may not have made the cut today.

Indeed, today’s Pavarotti is a handsome German tenor named Jonas Kaufmann, while Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais reigns as Puccini heroines. South African, Chinese and South Korean singers are conquering the opera stage, as are Australians, whom Mr Gowland describes as “very strong, with a healthy outlook on life, and they don’t think twice about going off on their own to sing in Europe”.

That is not to say, of course, that there are no Italian stars. Cecilia Bartoli resides firmly at the top, and others such as Barbara Frittoli and Marcello Giordani enjoy thriving international careers. The other Italian singer with instant name recognition, Andrea Bocelli, is primarily a recording artist due to his blindness, as well as the nature of his voice. But with all of Italy’s major opera houses except two posting a deficit, there’s little incentive for an angel-voiced Italian to embark on an operatic singing career. (Prospero asked 10 Italian conservatories for their current number of voice students as well as the number 20 years ago. Only the Vincenzo Bellini Conservatory in Palermo responded, and it could only provide the current number: 71.) Then again, with Australia only having two full-time opera houses, the country’s young singers face little choice but to make the much longer journey to steady work in Europe, primarily Germany.

There is hope. Opera Roma—Rome’s opera house—is trying to reverse the decline, and last month launched a young artist programme. (Apart from La Scala’s academy, which trains young singers, there are no young artist programmes at Italian opera houses.) “We said, ‘every major opera house in Europe and the United States has a young artist programme, so how can it be that the capital of the country of opera doesn’t have one?’” explains Eleonora Pacetti, the programme’s director. “We want to promote Italian opera singing, but it’s also a symbolic step.” 288 singers applied for the seven singer positions. Five of the successful applicants were Italians, though Ms Pacetti insists that the selection was made purely on the base of merit. Next year the Kaufmanns-to-be will perform two operas at Opera Roma. According to Ms Pacetti, the programme will help to “demonstrate that we Italians can still be creative in the world of opera”.