2023-12-04 07:31:10
Cape Town (AFP) – The tall, broad-shouldered man was destined to one day run a farm somewhere in South Africa. But Yonwaba Mbo, 31, is rehearsing the role of Figaro and is preparing to take his first steps as an opera soloist.
Published on: 04/12/2023 – 08:31 Modified on: 04/12/2023 – 08:30
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The University of Cape Town is home to arguably the most prestigious opera school in Africa. The soprano Pretty Yende, invited to sing in England during the coronation of King Charles III, sang her first vocals there.
Like her, who grew up in a small village in the east of the country, most of the students here fell into bel canto somewhat by chance and often late in life.
Yonwaba Mbo abandoned his studies in agriculture to join the shady campus from where lyrical voices fly through the windows.
“Before discovering opera, I always asked myself: But why do these people shout so loudly?” laughs the baritone with the powerful voice, leaving his rather reserved nature behind.
The “opera bug” bit him when he didn’t even know how to decipher a score, he started “from scratch”, he admits.
He has been studying lyrical singing for six years now, motivated by the “incredible” idea that a person like him might tell a story by singing and in a foreign language.
A rehearsal of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at the University of Cape Town (UCT) music school, November 15, 2023 © GIANLUIGI GUERCIA / AFP/Archives
That day, he repeated for the umpteenth time the charming and jealous character of Figaro, Mozart’s rebellious valet, exchanging lines with his classmate, Siphosihle Letsoso, in the role of the lover Suzanne.
The 23-year-old left the small town of Kimberley and the Karoo desert where she is from, to fulfill her dream of becoming a soprano soloist.
“In Kimberley, there is no opera hall,” she says, bursting out laughing. If she succeeds, she will return to her hometown and set up a performance hall there, she swears.
Treble clef
Young singers arrive at college with “raw talent” that needs to be “refined,” says the school’s director, Jeremy Silver.
Sitting at the piano, the 56-year-old British conductor accompanies the soloists, interrupting the arias to provide specific advice.
A rehearsal at the University of Cape Town (UCT) music school, November 15, 2023 © GIANLUIGI GUERCIA / AFP
“With this crescendo, you must become threatening,” he explains to the interpreter of Suzanne, who assiduously takes notes on his score.
The University of Cape Town is the only academy in the country with a comprehensive opera teaching curriculum, including music and singing, but also acting and opera languages such as Italian, French and German.
Most of the time, the young people who arrive have learned to sing in school choirs or at mass but lack theoretical knowledge.
Paulina Malefane, who teaches at the opera school, tries to force destiny by scouting out promising talents in primary schools and preparing future generations of soloists.
In the township of Khayelitsha, one of the largest and most impoverished in the country, on the outskirts of Cape Town, around thirty schoolchildren are working on sheet music.
A rehearsal at the University of Cape Town (UCT) music school, November 15, 2023 © GIANLUIGI GUERCIA / AFP/Archives
Paulina Malefane passes between the tables, leans over the notebooks and encourages the tracing of treble clefs: “One day, you are going to steal my job!”, she says to the apprentice musicians.
Now an actress and singer crowned with international awards, she too had to make up for lost time and acquire theoretical musical knowledge once she entered university.
If one of these children one day joins the opera school, “he will at least enter with the assurance of having the theory”, she congratulates herself while a little girl at the piano points, with a finger still hesitant, the C key on the keyboard.
© 2023 AFP
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