“South African opera songbird soars around the globe”

South African soprano Pumeza Matshikiza has sung in some of the world’s greatest opera houses, and gave a rare homecoming performance in Johannesburg in March 2017.

Pumeza Matshikiza fortuitously stumbled upon opera as a child living in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Hearing a recording of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro while scanning for stations on a portable radio, it was love at first listen.

“I was just transfixed,” Matshikiza told The Australian newspaper in 2016, “I thought, ‘what language are they singing in, how people can sing like this, are they angels?’”

Following her dream to imitate those voices, a teenage Matshikiza began to find her voice while singing in church choirs.

As a student at the University of Cape Town, she collaborated with South African-born composer Kevin Volans on a number of his works for the Handspring Puppet Theatre. It was Volans who urged her successful application for a young artist scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London.

Read the feature at Brand South Africa