Popstar to Operastar is a British television programme in which pop stars were trained to sing opera. The show began airing on ITV on 15 January 2010 at 9pm. The show was repeated on TV3 Ireland on Saturday evening. The programme was produced by Renegade Pictures. With the show being a singing competition, it featured appropriate judges: Rolando Villazón, Katherine Jenkins, Meat Loaf and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. Villazón and Jenkins also mentored the contestants giving them the songs to sing during the live shows. Meat Loaf and Llewelyn-Bowen were critic-judges, who talked about their performances. However, after the first series, it was announced that Meat Loaf and Llewelyn-Bowen would not be returning as judges. Their replacements were confirmed to be actor and opera-director, Simon Callow and classical singer/violinist, Vanessa-Mae. The presenters of the show were confirmed to be Alan Titchmarsh and Myleene Klass with the non-operatic "Dies Irae" from Verdi's Requiem as the theme tune. However, for the second series, Titchmarsh did not return to the show. The winner of the first series was Darius Campbell and winner of the second series was Joe McElderry. The first episode of series 2 brought in 5.98 million viewers bringing the show its highest ratings to date. Each week the results show featured a guest performance, normally an operastar singing to promote their upcoming album. For every vote cast, money was donated to the Nordoff-Robbins charity. The winner also received a payment for a charity of their choice.
Format
The show is an opera-singing competition in which eight celebrity singers who are known for singing pop music compete through the competition and try to win the title of the show. Each week they are trained by professional opera stars ; who teach them how to sing opera. The acts all perform live, giving a performance of their operatic song in an effort to impress the public, who will vote for them to keep them in the competition. Each performance is shown both live on television and in front of a live studio audience. The two singers with the fewest public votes are in the bottom two and get the chance to sing again, however their previous performance are "forgiven and forgotten" and the judges vote based on their sing-off performance who should stay and go. During the first series, if the judges vote went to a tie, it would go down to the public vote, however during series two the head judge will get to decide who stays in the competition after the sing off, if it is a tie. The head judge changed every week. However, if the judges vote against the contestant to stay in the competition they will be eliminated. A proportion of the revenue from the telephone votes is donated to the Nordoff-Robbins music therapy charity.
Judges and presenters
Once the show had been announced, there was a lot of speculation over who would be on the judging panel. However, it was later confirmed that the show's judges were to be Katherine Jenkins, who would also mentor the contestants, and Rolando Villazón who would mentor as well. Meat Loaf and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen were also confirmed to be judge critics, who would judge the contestant's performances only and not mentor the acts. All of the four judges critique each performance. Jenkins and Villazón mentor the acts, training the pop stars in the art of opera singing; bringing them out their comfort zone and training them to sing in an operatic voice. It was then later confirmed that Myleene Klass would present the show, however she was revealed as a co-host and Alan Titchmarsh was confirmed to be the other co-host of the show and they would present it together. However, after series 1, Alan Titchmarsh confirmed that he would not return as the co-host of the show and Klass would present the show as a solo presenter. After series one, it was confirmed that Meat Loaf and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would not be returning as judges and would instead be replaced by Vanessa-Mae and Simon Callow.
