There’s a certain ‘bug’ that descends on anyone that has ever been to the Verbier Festival. I remember at music college that musicians would return from three weeks at the Swiss mountain town’s renowned programme able to speak of little else. We’d tease them, taking a tally for every time ‘Verbier’ was mentioned in conversation.

I went to the Festival last summer for the first time, initially sceptical about the attraction of the place and the judgments of grandeur I had surrounding it. Arriving at the ski hotel that would become my base on the high street, it felt as if I had descended into a dreamland. Morning coffee on my room’s balcony, looking across to the snow-capped mountains, followed by wondering up the town’s high street, complete with cafes, restaurants and outdoor clothing shops, to the cable cars and taking one to the top of the mountain.

Then, in the evening, a performance of one of my all-time favourite operas: Alban Berg’s Wozzeck at the festival’s main auditorium under Lahav Shani. The Salle des Combins – a seasonal tent, with seating close to 1,500, is the main concert space, providing the base for all of the Festival’s symphonic concerts, operas, and some recitals.

In many ways it is a dreamland. The Disneyland of classical music – walking around, spotting favourite artists that usually feel out-of-reach; like Yuja Wang, Sir András Schiff, Antonio Pappano and Renée Fleming. But the Academy arm of Verbier is a training programme open to pianists, violinists, violists, cellists and chamber ensembles which forms a huge part of the landscape of classical music specialist education.

For 13 selected singers, the Atelier Lyrique Academy brings a choice of operatic or song specialism, though singers take part in both opera and song classes. Those on the specialist opera course work towards an opera performance, in 2024 of Verdi’s Falstaff, with the Verbier Academy Junior Orchestra and conductor James Gaffigan. Some also take on supporting roles in the Festival’s main opera – last year’s Wozzeck included the Swiss baritone Felix Gygli in the role of the Second Apprentice, himself part of the Academy.

‘Something very special about Verbier is this open-door policy,’ head of Verbier’s Academy Stephen McHolm told me. ‘Even for the concerts, you can go backstage after a mainstage concert and be two steps from your idols. But the masterclass is especially intimate.’

Mainstage singers usually offer an open masterclass for the singers following their performances, with artists such as last year’s Renée Fleming, Lise Davidsen and Thomas Hampson.

‘You’re in with the musicians – part of this inner circle. Part of a very select group that are getting to learn for free from the best in the world.’

It’s a unique place, I reflect with McHolm. Certainly an atmosphere of openness, vulnerability and freedom felt tangible from the young artists I spoke to, outside the Salle des Combin in the late afternoon sun, just before Fleming and Evgeny Kissin’s mainstage recital.

‘I’ve gained a lot of confidence, in both my self and my singing,’ one Academy singer told me. ‘We started out working with a really brilliant Shakespeare actor named James Garnon, beginning from a very kind of “actory” place, not a “singer” place. So I think that was good in terms of thinking about my artistry and being a singing-actor and not just a a singer.’

‘When James is trying to get them to come out of their shells, and the things they’re thinking about might not be so pleasant, all of a sudden the floodgates open,’ McHolm says about the actor training. ‘I think that icebreaker for the singers is important because they all see each other’s vulnerability. And it makes them all feel more human.’

Verbier’s Festival & Academy began in 1994, founded by Martin Engström, who remains the artistic and executive head as founder and director. Since its genesis, it has formed the start of the careers of many renowned artists today including Kitty Whately, Ema Nikolovska, Gihoon Kim and Adèle Charvet – the French mezzo who I met during my time at the Festival, shortly before she performed in Wozzeck as Margret.

‘My group at Verbier was a wonderful group of singers and after a week we were a family,’ Charvet tells me about her time at the Academy back in 2017. ‘We were international family of Korean, German, Austrian, French, Kiwi singers and we really had each other’s backs. I’ve done many academies before and since, and that’s not always the case.

‘It’s a rehearsal and work process at Verbier. But there’s public watching and you can feel you don’t want to show yourself having flaws, so that’s a very interesting thing to navigate,’ Charvet admits. ‘Naturally, you feel sometimes that the public master classes are a “show” for the audience. You feel like you’re here to showcase, but there was so much dedicated work that I completely forgot about the pressure after a few days.’

This year’s summer Festival includes, alongside the Academy’s production of Falstaff, Gábor Takács-Nagy conducting Le nozze di Figaro with a cast of Peter Mattei, Golda Schultz, Tommaso Barea and Anna El-Khashem. Other highlights promised are the ‘Karaoke Lyrique’, a recital from Magdalena Kožená and pianist Kirill Gerstein, Antonio Pappano leading the Academy Orchestra through the likes of Rossini and Bizet and an evening of ‘Schoenberg at the Cabaret’.

McHolm is proud of the Festival’s heritage and status, but he is also refreshingly real about the situation for artists. Also the head of Verbier’s UNLTD programme (pronounced ‘unlimited’) – a ‘creative labatory that amplifies music across genres’. McHolm sees this part of the Festival as being vital to the singers’ professional development and reality for those looking for a career in classical music.

‘Not only do they need to be great players, but they need to have something to say and they need to learn how to connect with audiences,’ he explains. ‘I don’t listen to just classical music. On my iPhone I could go from it could go from the Ravel string quartet to art song to the Beastie Boys. I think more and more of us listen to music in different ways.

‘We’re not just set on one musical style, and for us to think that is naïve. We see it in our students – they have our interests outside of classical music too,’ says McHolm. ‘They’re interesting people and they have tastes like anybody else.

‘UNLTD is about being able to put world music and jazz next to classical music, because they’re all valid. It’s even more daunting for young musicians sometimes to think that way and to realise, “I’m actually up against all of this”, but they are and we want them to think “how can you be interesting?” ’

The takeaways from Verbier are, for me, still present almost a year later as I recall those four intense days of musical and visual overwhelm. As one young artist explained to me, ‘Being here has been a very intense. I’m really looking forward to being able to absorb all the information. When you’re having all this coaching back-to-back, which is incredible, you don’t have the awareness of exactly how things you’re learning are meaningful. I keep feeling, “I know this is meaningful”. I just don’t know exactly what it means yet.’ 

The 2024 Verbier Festival runs 18 July - 4 August www.verbierfestival.com

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Opera Now. Never miss an issue – subscribe today