Archives
Opera school fundraising launch
19 September 2012
Chuma Sopotela and Grant Swaney appeared in the first stage adaptation of JM Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. |
August marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the opening of UCT’s Baxter Theatre Centre, the venue for a variety of cutting-edge productions in that time. This year was no different, as the theatre hosted the first performance of Waiting for the Barbarians, a stage adaption of Nobel laureate JM Coetzee's novel.
Adapted and directed by Alexandre 'Sasha' Marine and produced by Maurice Podbrey from Mopo Productions, the play featured a local line-up of eight actors led by Grant Swaney, Nicholas Pauling and Chuma Sopotela.
Cape Town-born Coetzee taught at UCT before emigrating to Australia in 2002. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. First published in 1980, Waiting for the Barbarians is his third novel and was chosen by Penguin as one of the Great Books of the 20th century.
The Baxter has also served as the venue for many of the UCT Opera School's productions.
Speaking at the premier of Cosi fan tutte, featuring an all-student cast, Vice Chancellor Dr Max Price said that the school is continuing to fulfil its mandate of nurturing talent from unassuming places.
"We continue to find natural potential in young people who would otherwise have had no avenue into an elite art such as the opera."
The UCT Opera School has produced many students who are now changing the face of opera worldwide. Pretty Yende, winner of all the prizes in the Belvedere competition, is currently on contract at La Scala, while Golda Shultz enchants audiences at the Bavarian State Opera. Sarah-Jane
Brandon won both the Kathleen Ferrier Award and the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Rose Bowl. Fikile Mvinjelwa is established at the Deutsche Opera school in Berlin, and Musa Ngqungwana is a resident artist of the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.
The Opera School’s mission is aligned to UCT’s broader transformation agenda, which will develop inclusive curricula and engage with African voices. To this end, UCT has launched a fundraising campaign to support an endowment fund that will enable the Opera School to continue the excellent work of the past 90 years.
Supporters and opera lovers can sponsor a student via a bursary, take ownership of a production (or a part of one), or bring out the world’s leading singers and teachers to become artists-in-residence at UCT, transferring skills and exposing students to international trends.
Opera is the most expensive of UCT’s academic programmes, because the nature of the training is highly technical and individualised.
"Grants ensure that an increasing number of students are given the opportunity to participate in operatic productions of high professional standards under the musical and stage direction of international experts," Price added.
Funding has played a huge role in the Opera School’s success; and with additional funding, the School can continue expanding while producing world-class singers.
For more information about the Baxter Theatre Centre, please click here.
To support the Opera School’s fundraising campaign, please contact Deidre Sickle