“Texan tenor Sahel Salam melted our hearts with Nemorino’s naïvely optimistic aria from Donizetti’s ‘L’elisir d’amore’. Slight, chatty and yet full-voiced, Salam also made a convincing Rodolfo impressing Puccini’s cold-handed Mimi with a ringing top ‘C’. He also calmed the justifiable applause with a tender encore, Quilter’s setting of Tennyson’s sonnet ‘Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal’.”