South Africa’s Pumeza takes opera world by storm

It is seems like a fairy tale of a girl who grows up in a tiny shack in the townships of Cape Town, discovers opera music, wins a scholarship at a prestigious music school, and arrives on the world stage thanks to a contract with one of the biggest labels for classical music.

South African operatic soprano Pumeza Matshikiza came to the attention of the world in 2014 by combining her training as an opera singer to transform both popular and traditional African songs.

Known simply by her first name, Pumeza, who has roots in the Eastern Cape, has had an outstanding year. She made her role debut with the Stuttgart State Opera in a production of the Italian opera, “La bohéme” in May this year. Later in the year, she played the role of Dido in Henry Purcell’s work “Dido and Aeneas” with the English Concert Orchestra.

Townships

Pumeza grew up in the townships of South Africa but today has the world at her feet having signed a record deal with Decca Classics, the legendary London-based music label that distributes music by icons like Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli.

Having grown up on choral and church music, she stumbled on Opera music as she was scanning through radio channels in South Africa and was instantly hooked. But since she excelled in the sciences at school, one of her teachers registered her at university to study quantity surveying. Pumeza could not resist the music coming from the students at the South Africa College of Music, University of Cape Town and so she eventually switched to that music school.

She auditioned successfully for a part in an opera by South African composer Kevin Volans called “The Confessions of Zeno” and then took a year off college to travel around Europe with the show.

It was Volans who later paid for a trip to the U.K where she auditioned for the Royal College of Music and was awarded a full scholarship. “Probably the most promising soprano to come our way in the last 10 years,” is how Neil Mackie Head of Vocal Studies at the Royal College of Music described Pumeza.

She would became a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House for two seasons making her debut singing the role of the Flower maiden in composer Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal.”

During this period, she participated in master classes with opera greats like Kiri Te Kenawa, Sir Thomas Allen, Joan Rogers and Ileana Cotrubas. She also sung the roles of the Slave in “Salome” by Richard Strauss, Innocent in “The Minotaur,” Tebaldo in “Don Carlos” by Giuseppe Verdi and Sandman in Hansel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck.

In January 2010, Pumeza won First Prize in the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition and became an Associate Artist of the Classical Opera Company.

She has just completed a European tour with Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón where she performed a selection of duets from French and Italian operas and zarzuela, the Spanish lyric dramatic genre

During the just-ended tour, she performed at Europe’s major concert halls including Royal Festival Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, the Great Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow and the Vienna Konzerthaus.

Concerts

In September Pumeza performed at the closing concert for the U.K’s top classical music event, The Proms, at London’s Hyde Park with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Richard Balcombe.

Her debut album “Voice of Hope” was first released in the U.K in July this year, following her performance at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this year, and the international release followed in October.

The 18 songs on the CD are a joy to listen to particularly because of Pumeza’s breathtaking operatic renditions of African classics and traditional songs including Thula Baby (Hush, My Baby) and the delightful Saduva (Hush, I hear you) that Miriam Makeba memorably sang with The Manhattan Brothers in the 1959 film Come Back Africa.

Album

In fact, Pumeza’s album contains her interpretations of other songs made famous by Makeba like “The Naughty Little Flea,” “Pata Pata,” and “The Click Song.”

The classic Swahili song “Malaika” has been recorded in many different styles and versions but this must surely be the first time there has been an operatic performance of the song. These are not just cover versions of old songs; it is a complete makeover in style and format.

The African songs sit alongside classical operatic arias like “O mio babbino caro” from the comic opera Gianni Schicchi, “Donde lieta usci” from the third part of La bohéme and “Signore ascolta” from the Italian opera Turandot. The songs were recorded with the Aurora Orchestra under direction of Iain Farrington and the Stuttgart State Orchestra directed by Simon Hewitt.

Search for the official video of “Thula Baba” on YouTube and you can also stream audio samples via her official website, pumeza.com. The album “Voice of Hope” is also available on iTunes.