/ 8 June 2001

Level-headed and soaring

This is the make or break year for Cape Town baritone Fikile Mvinjelwa, writes Mathaha Mathaha

A string of local and international awards, including the 2001 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music, have put Fikile Mvinjelwa under the spotlight.

Is he destined for better, bigger things or will he fade? After Love and Green Onions he is booked to sing the title role in Rigoletto for Cape Town Opera in September, so the signs are propitious.

The 36-year-old baritone’s star began shining in 1998 when he won the FNB Vita Award for best newcomer. The 1998/1999 FMR/Spier Ikhwezi Prize for most promising singer established him as a local force, but it was the silver that he brought from the Boris Cristoff International Competition for Young Opera Singers in Sofia, Bulgaria, last June, that really focused attention on him.

Then, of course, there was this year’s Young Artist recognition.

The Standard Bank National Arts Festival will see a confident male lead in the new jazz opera Love and Green Onions. The jazz opera is based on Zakes Mda’s novel Ways of Dying with music by jazz supremo Denzil Weale. Part of his confidence is due to the fact that this will not be the first opera Mvinjelwa is involved in under director Michael Williams. Earlier there was Enoch, Prophet of God.

He is also one of four soloists who will perform extracts that illustrate Cape Town Opera director Angelo Gobbato’s festival presentation of An Evening with Verdi on July 29. This is a repeat of a sold-out series held at the Baxter Theatre Complex during summer school in January.

Although Mvinjelwa remembers being interested in music since childhood, and he recalls Sunday school, church and township choirs, it was really at Msobomvu High School in Butterworth, Transkei, that singing became his preoccupation.

“We started a quartet … that got invited everywhere. You should remember that in those days people were really singing. Singing has been both a career and hobby for me since then.”

But this does not explain how he made the transition from that to opera. The difference, he says, is in that in the former one needs to know just the tonic sol-fa, the doh-re-me-fah kind of singing.

“We were never taught how to read music. And this is the part where one has really got to work hard at. It took me four years… For instance, you learn breast control, how to project yourself in a certain way. I am still learning. You don’t stop, you don’t stop.”

Mvinjelwa believes he can carry off the role of Toloki, the professional mourner in Love and Green Onions. He has the right build Toloki (“bobbin”) is often a pet name for a shortish, stocky man. Mvinjelwa, like Toloki, has a very warm presence. But the resemblance ends there: Mvinjelwa is a polished man of the world with a taste for gorgeous silk shirts. Toloki is the male version of a bag lady, living in the harbour, smelly and dirty.

Toloki and Noria, sung by Gloria Bosman, the female lead, know each other from back home in the countryside. While life has been a downward spiral for Toloki, the opposite happened to Noria and for 20 years their lives could not be more different until they meet again, that is, with Toloki now a professional mourner, doing the rounds at wakes, singing and preaching.

Once he starts describing and painting the scene, Mvinjelwa is unable to hold himself back, peppering his story with Xhosa expressions to give weight to his thoughts.

Do you understand Xhosa, he asks belatedly, when he realises there’s hardly been a response to his barrage of words. Well, just the odd expression here and there. He laughs apologetically and continues, though this time careful to speak in English.

At one time he’s called to attend to some matter on the phone and he unconsciously launches into song in that compelling baritone, which embarrasses him when he is back and gets a compliment.

Opera is, after all, just stories about people, he explains. La Boheme and Verdi’s Rigoletto are just stories about people in a context different to Africa’s.

He points out that opera is now no longer restricted to European singers and audiences. At the Bulgarian young opera singers’ competition, for instance, there were participants from China, Japan, from “everywhere”.

“I have been on stage so often; played all sorts of roles from jester, lover, even a disabled person once. This is all opera is about. A story that happens every day.”

Looking back, Mvinjelwa remembers how his parents were unhappy about his taking up music as a career, believing like most African families used to, that there were better options for him.

This has changed, however, as local and international recognition is heaped on him. “They realise I’m getting somewhere,” he says easily. With a fortnight to go before the premiere of Love and Green Onions at the festival, Mvinjelwa is putting his nose to the grindstone.

Trying to pin him down for an interview is a job in itself. His cellphone is turned off 20 out of 24 hours. Even landline calls can only be taken at allocated times, like when he’s on his tea break. It was, for instance, not until evening that he was available for this interview and only because he was about to start rehearsing. This also takes a heavy toll on his family he has two little children.

One person who believes most ardently in the baritone’s capability and future is Gobbato, who recalls Mvinjelwa first got involved with his company after the latter’s community choir took part in several productions at the Nico Malan Theatre.

“He then came to audition for us. I was impressed with his voice and asked him if he really wanted to get involved with us because this needs commitment, you know. His answer was that he loved opera and wanted to share this passion with his people.”

Mvinjelwa started to work on his voice, studying with people like Wendy Fine, and within a very short time his voice had developed quite unbelievably, Gobbato says.

He’s dedicated and has become a big name in opera, says Gobbato.

Everything had to be quick with double the work, agrees Mvinjelwa.

Gobbato feels his charge would not have any trouble if he went international. His major problem would not be his ability, but like most singers would confirm, coping with the time that it takes to get known. “You have to have money to survive until promoters discover and sign you on,” he says.

Mvinjelwa, Sibongile Ngema and Sibongile Khumalo are a few of the leading voices among Africans who are now involved in opera. “There’s a gold mine in singing ability out there. Our opera school has more than 40 [students] at the moment,” Gobbato says confidently.

Despite the acclaim, Mvinjelwa is still level-headed, believing he has to work very hard to make himself a success.

Dedication to the job at hand, discipline and honesty are values you don’t learn in a class, he says. One learns them as one slogs along through life. “You have to be a sportsman and accept that you will have bad days.”

Catch Fikile Mvinjelwa in Love and Green Onions at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival on June 28 and 30 and in An Evening with Verdi on June 29. For more information Tel: (046) 622 4341