The first aria I heard sung by South African soprano Vuvu Mpofu was during a 2016 production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen at Cape Town’s Artscape Theatre, a sprawling theatre campus, partly in the shadow of Table Mountain.
Playing Micaela, a lovelorn maiden, she sang an aria called Je dis que rien ne me epouvante which translated from French means I say that nothing frightens me. I was producing a profile piece on Vuvu, but had not yet heard her sing on stage in performance. We had spent the day doing interviews, and filming backstage as she warmed up and prepared for her role.
As I watched her performance from the wings and listened to her soaring, shimmering voice, I remember that time seemed to stand still. Her costume was simple, her face and gestures expressive and her voice pleading and rising, communicating deep emotion. Her character was seeking her troubled lover in the woods, under the moonlight, and she was wrestling with fear, not only of the lonely dark place where she stood but also her fear of the fierce rival to her love, the outrageously badly-behaved Carmen.
Vuvu’s own story is equally remarkable and has demanded of her a great deal of courage and determination. She has travelled to far off places and faced off rivals in singing competitions. She was born in the Eastern Cape, a rural South African province, and discovered opera as a teenager, her first encounter being a recording of La Traviata by Verdi. After school she found her way to Cape Town with her suitcases, and after an audition, won a scholarship to the University of Cape Town’s School of Music. It was only here that she started her formal musical education, which meant learning notation as well as European languages like German, Italian and French. She then took her first professional step on to the stage with the Cape Town Opera Company as one of their Young Artists.
In 2016, we spent about a day and a half with her just before she was to go to Europe after winning awards in significant competitions. Her exact destiny could not be forecast, although things were looking good and she was optimistic about her career. This year, five years later, we came into contact again, during the production of a longer piece on the Cape Town Opera Company. Now she was the star, the lead role, the Prima Donna, in another of Georges Bizet’s production, The Pearl Fishers.
Vuvu Mpofu as the priestess Leila on the opening night of The Pearl Fishers, a 2021 Cape Town Opera Company production, at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town. Bass-baritone Thesele Kemane sings the role of the priest Nourabad. Title photograph and photograph above: Cape Town Opera Company
Vuvu had flown to Cape Town with her new baby for this performance and was to head out immediately after the production of The Pearl Fishers to set up a base for herself in Switzerland. Her diary is booked up with singing engagements for not just months but a few years to come, and she has her own agent and website page. I found her at this meeting more confident, but still grounded in reality, with a quirky laugh and that same gentle, generous demeanour.
Soprano Vuvu Mpofu in a meditation on the window sill at The Alphen Hotel in Constantia, after an interview about her career as an international opera star
Vuvu’s success is attributable to more than her natural talent. It is also thanks to her hard work, composure, her lively sense of fun and her courage to take on the world. Her success and that of other Young Artists is also attributable to the Cape Town Opera Company which has nourished opera and mentored opera singers against the odds. The 21-year-old company has made it its business to find and groom young talent, and then cheer as these gifted singers spread their wings. Opera stars who have travelled this route include Pretty Yende, Golda Schultz and Levy Sekgapane. Nurtured on the southern-most tip of Africa, through one of the continent’s very few opera companies, they have graced the world’s most applauded stages in significant roles.
Here is a link to the piece I produced and directed which explores this company’s role as the only opera company in South Africa, at a time when creative and performing arts companies are under extraordinary pressure financially, a situation made worse by the COVID pandemic.
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2021/07/27/south-africa-cape-town-opera-spc.cnn.html
You can also go directly to capetownopera.co.za.
If you want to find out more about Vuvu, you can do what I have been doing this morning: browse You Tube and watch her sing. Particularly wonderful is her performance of Estrano, Estrano…Sempre libera from Verdi’s La Traviata, the very first opera which stopped her in her tracks. It’s from the 2015 Operalia Competition in which she won third prize.
Voila the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T5hBFNWWgk
In an interesting twist for the production of this piece, a tighter pandemic lockdown forced the postponement of the last two nights of The Pearl Fishers, which meant Vuvu had to leave Cape Town for other engagements, and her understudy had to step into her shoes, at the last moment. The understudy was Capetonian Brittany Smith, another extraordinary voice and personality with a powerful stage presence and expressive range. She is one of four in Cape Town Opera’s current Young Artist Programme, and her star quality has been noted.
Make-up for soprano Brittany Smith before she takes the stage as Leila in The Pearl Fishers, an opera by Georges Bizet, in the 2021 production by the Cape Town Opera Company