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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) Forget the national Opera — today's up-and-coming performers would rather be heard on the subway. Paris' transit authority RATP is fast becoming a hotly contested sound stage. Since 1997, Antoine Naso, a 21-year RATP veteran and the authority's self-designated artistic director, has selected a range of entertainers to fill the Metro's tentacular halls with world music, rock and jazz standards or classical melodies.

At a recent tryout in a cramped storefront locale about two stops from the Bastille, Naso, wearing a black tie matching his shoes and slacks, sat with two RATP jurors, listening to a group of twentysomething French rappers and a musician playing koto, a traditional Japanese string instrument. Also auditioning were a duet of classical singers and a Roma singer and her accordion player. Around 1,000 musicians audition every six months, vying for one of the 350 licenses granted every year to play for tips in authorized spaces underground.

Nobuko Matsumiya, a koto player, says her performances in the Metro have helped her book dates above ground, at concert halls in France and across Europe. "It's a good way to meet people," she says. Adds Léonor Leprêtre, a Parisian soprano trying to make a name for herself: "It's a great public: if they like your music they stay; if they don't, they just walk away." Last year the ratp released Correspondances, an album featuring the Metro's best performers. Like any good showbiz impresario, Naso makes space in his otherwise cramped office for a couple of trophy snapshots. One shows him with Prince Albert of Monaco, another with enduring French rock icon, Johnny Hallyday. Recently, London's Underground and transit systems in Rotterdam and Tokyo approached Naso for tips on how to set up similar tryouts. The Metro's liveliest stages include Châtelet, with bands performing Latin American music and New Orleans jazz, and the Bastille, where Matsumiya regularly performs because, she says, it has "good acoustics." And Metronauts who tip .

• TERRENCE MURRAY
• Paris' underground music scene may pull into your station