Those of us who heard the young Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw sing Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at Garsington last month were hit by a musical coup de foudre: where had this wonderful singer been hiding, and what else could she do? The answer to the second question has come with her performance as Lisa in the same composer's The Queen of Spades at Opera Holland Park. This is a darker and more psychologically complex role, but she brings to it the same exquisite artistry, and the same luminosity of tone: catch her there before she goes – as she surely soon will - into international orbit.
