Agents will be queuing up to sign this 26-year-old baritone from Sichuan

The Royal Academy of Music’s end-of-term opera can always be looked forward to because it never disappoints: the repertoire is enterprising, the musical performance is invariably on a high level, and the productions are almost always sane and unpretentious: qualities that can’t be relied upon in more prestigious houses. This term’s production(s) were no exception: the strongest two of Puccini’s Il trittico.

If you have to say that one of the three is weaker than the others, my vote goes to Il tabarro, Puccini’s attempt at verismo, a B-opera comparable to B-movies of the 1940s, except that they tended to be not quite so relentlessly conscientious in building atmosphere and more intent on actually getting on with the plot. Each opera of trittico seems to be a piece of self-denial on Puccini’s part, the chief austerity being an almost total lack of arias. One applauds his enterprise in trying something new, but the price is high. I find Il tabarro to be merely depressing, while Suor Angelica, despite treading on treacherous ground from start to finish, is exquisite and touching, if not moving.

The RAM’s production, with very little scenery, was efficient, the atmosphere created mainly by the nuns, with their depressing footwear. I spent about half the opera reminding myself that it wasn’t Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. The Frenchman’s debt to Puccini seems to me enormous, though everyone says his influences were Musorgsky and Debussy. Angelica was winningly sung and acted by Céline Forrest (first cast), and the climactic scene with the appalling Zia Principessa devastated in a way that would normally be considered beyond Puccini’s reach. Claire Barnett-Jones as the Princess intimidated more by her clothes and demeanour than by her voice. It is a rather small mezzo, so the effect was almost hammy, when it should be calmly cruel.