About 98% of the Cape Town Opera choir is black, writes Barry Streek
Opera in South Africa, especially in the “racist” Western Cape, has suddenly gone black. In the process, the image of opera as elite, Eurocentric art and entertainment has all but disappeared.
Today 98% of the Cape Town Opera choir is black, as are many of its soloists. Graduates of its training programmes, such as Abel Motsoadi, are studying in the United States, while others are singing abroad and in other parts of South Africa.
The Spier Trust’s Carmen was booked for a two-week run in London. It has now completed a three-month run to packed houses in the English capital and has an offer to perform in New York. It is also being brought back to South Africa for at least one performance in Johannesburg next month.
Two of the soloists in Carmen are Luzuko Mahlaba and Pauline Malefane, who both graduated from the Cape Town Opera Studio programme.
Music critic Deon Irish says the Cape Town Opera choir is “marvellous” and “overseas visitors get gobsmacked when they first hear them”.
The emergence of black opera in the Cape has been the result of tutoring programmes established in 1989 at Cape Town Opera by Dr Angelo Gobbato, director of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Opera School.
Gobbato says there are some extraordinarily talented artists in South Africa who, with some training, could easily compete internationally. It saddens him how much talent had been lost in the past because people in black and coloured communities did not have opportunities or refused to participate in “apartheid” or “elite” art.
Cape Town Opera struggles financially despite its annual budget of R6,5-million, much of which comes from a grant by the Western Cape Cultural Commission. It also gets a small grant from the National Arts Council and substantial private-sector support. With this the Opera runs its choral training programme for talented young singers. More than 300 people audition for this programme annually.
Gobbato says the selection is impossible because the voice quality is so high, but only 24 singers are accepted. They are given voice and stagecraft lessons and basic courses in operatic languages such as French, Italian and German. They also participate in operas in Cape Town. At the end of the programme the singers are ready for formal training at musical schools.
Cape Town Opera also has a full-time vocal ensemble that participates in its choirs. It consists of 24 singers who are chosen from about 50 hopefuls on the basis of their potential. The programme is sponsored by Sanlam.
In addition, the Opera has a studio programme in which talented singers are trained to be soloists. Motsoadi, Malefane and Mahlaba are among those who have participated in this programme, which is funded by Demindex. The programme takes 10 people over two years, with five new entrants every year.
The Cape Town Opera receives one-year grants so it cannot offer singers more than a year’s contract. “If only we could get guaranteed three-year funding we could offer them some security,” says Gobbato.
He says even after the Nico Malan Theatre complex was opened and black and coloured people could get permits to be in choirs and orchestras there was a lot suspicion about opera, which was regarded as representative of the apartheid system.
However, with colleagues at UCT like Michael Williams and Vetta Wise, and the extraordinary talent they discovered, the situation started to change. Quite coincidentally, the university opera school was approached by singers of considerable calibre, like Motsoadi, Sibongile Mngoma, Fikile Nvimjelwa and Marcos de Sando, and this facilitated the process of transformation.
“Difficult as it has been it remains very gratifying to see such talent reaching its potential and growing,” says Gobbato. “It is a groundswell that is going on and it is more than the actual training. It is creating human values in people such as getting to a rehearsal on time and building a sense of self-worth that will increase opportunity and enable them to be valuable members of society.”
Gobbato demonstrates what this means. In a rehearsal room at UCT he sits down at a small grand piano and a group of students gather to sing a chorus from Verdi’s Macbeth. Their magnificent voices and enthusiasm immediately fill the room. Opera in South Africa has changed forever.