Sarah Moule - soprano

One of the most impressive opera recitals I've ever encountered was given by a postal worker in the sealed postal waggo on a train trundling between Turin and Milan back in the 1970s. I was invited inside because this particular inamorato took a shine to the two young women I was travelling with. There's a special thrill to opera in confined spaces, so long as the voice is good.
Scottish Opera's Opera Go Round have given me some of my mosr memorable opera evenings, in village halls around Scotland. In London the Handel House runs a sequence of concerts that allows a small audience to gather in Handel's own front room, hearing works where they were first ever tried out before an audience.
Sunday's 'Battle of the Rival Queens' was another memorable event. It was sweetly democratic, the mezzo Lindsay Bramley and the harpsichordist Bridget Cunningham all giving their equal weight to a programme of song, harpsichord and merry tales drawn from documents of the time - so it's a break with that spirit to single out one player. But that's what I'll do.
The soprano Sarah Moule (the soprano and not the London-based jazz singer of the same name) can hardly be noted as my discovery since she already has a second date booked with Lorin Maazel, but this is a bright career that should go far. The voice is warm and delicious, a whole store of effects waiting to be push through occasional words and notes. And in the tough setting of a tiny room with no stage, she acted her rival queen with perky and irresistible relish. I ache to enjoy her Mozart.