Opera it’s not

I don’t know how much Tristan Stewart-Robertson knows about opera (your report on television talent shows, 26 March), although with that name he should have a vague idea, but, please, don’t call a 17-year-old boy who sings The Prayer an opera singer. I am an opera singer and spent years working on technique, language and musicianship. This guy is an adolescent who has a nice voice, but he is not an opera singer.

Nor are Andrea Bocelli, Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson et al. They do not sing opera and therefore are not opera singers.

I am all for opening our work out to a wider audience, but it is an insult to all the students and teachers at music colleges world-wide, who spend a lot of time and money working hard at their craft and talent, and countless thousands working in opera houses all over Europe, when ignorant people choose to call these vocal “celebrities” opera singers.

Jonathan Antoine has a very mature voice for a 17-year-old, and would benefit from four or five years’ intensive training with a good teacher.

He could become a very good opera singer, although his size is against him, as opera singers nowadays have to be great singing actors, but I fear his future is now in the hands of Simon Cowell, and he will become a sort of successful freak like Bocelli, Susan Boyle and Paul Potts.

As the saying goes, “fair play to them”, but please don’t call them opera singers.

Brian Bannatyne-Scott

Murrayfield Drive

Edinburgh