Biography
Pumeza Matshikiza stands out among the promising young Black sopranos who graduated from South African conservatories during the 2000s and 2010s. She has taken the stage at leading opera houses throughout Europe and the United States while completing multiple recordings.
Although promoters have frequently presented her as the “township soprano,” she was in fact born on February 27, 1979, in the small Eastern Cape settlement of Lady Frere, whose population numbers around 2,500. Of Xhosa descent, she moved with her family to the segregated Nyonga township outside Cape Town. Opera reached her by chance when she tuned a radio to a broadcast of soprano Edith Mathis singing in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. With no resources available for private lessons, she built her own musical foundation by singing in church choirs. After completing studies at the University of Cape Town with Virginia Davids, she received a full three-year scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London and simultaneous admission to the Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where her formal operatic debut occurred as a flower maiden in Wagner’s Parsifal.
Matshikiza captured first prize at the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition in Dublin in 2010. The next year she joined the permanent ensemble of Stuttgart Opera in Germany, where she has sung leading soprano roles that include Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Mimi in Puccini’s La bohème; she had already performed the latter part at the Edinburgh Festival. In 2013 Decca signed her and arranged recording sessions at Abbey Road Studios for her debut album, Pumeza: Voice of Hope. Released in 2014, the recording combined operatic arias with African songs. Its launch coincided with Matshikiza’s performance at the opening of the Commonwealth Games, which reached an estimated audience of one billion television viewers; on that occasion she sang the Scottish song Freedom Come-All-Ye, a piece that references Nyonga Township yet was previously unknown to her.
The resulting attention led to further high-profile engagements in 2015 and 2016, among them an appearance with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome under Antonio Pappano for the world premiere of Luca Francesconi’s cantata Bread, Water, and Salt, which sets a speech by former South African president Nelson Mandela. Her second album, Arias, appeared in 2016. Her European and American credits continued to accumulate, culminating in a 2019 Dallas Opera debut as Mimi in La bohème, a role that has become closely identified with the singer. She returned to the studio in 2023 for the Signum Classics release A Celebration of Paul Reade.
Although promoters have frequently presented her as the “township soprano,” she was in fact born on February 27, 1979, in the small Eastern Cape settlement of Lady Frere, whose population numbers around 2,500. Of Xhosa descent, she moved with her family to the segregated Nyonga township outside Cape Town. Opera reached her by chance when she tuned a radio to a broadcast of soprano Edith Mathis singing in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. With no resources available for private lessons, she built her own musical foundation by singing in church choirs. After completing studies at the University of Cape Town with Virginia Davids, she received a full three-year scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London and simultaneous admission to the Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where her formal operatic debut occurred as a flower maiden in Wagner’s Parsifal.
Matshikiza captured first prize at the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition in Dublin in 2010. The next year she joined the permanent ensemble of Stuttgart Opera in Germany, where she has sung leading soprano roles that include Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Mimi in Puccini’s La bohème; she had already performed the latter part at the Edinburgh Festival. In 2013 Decca signed her and arranged recording sessions at Abbey Road Studios for her debut album, Pumeza: Voice of Hope. Released in 2014, the recording combined operatic arias with African songs. Its launch coincided with Matshikiza’s performance at the opening of the Commonwealth Games, which reached an estimated audience of one billion television viewers; on that occasion she sang the Scottish song Freedom Come-All-Ye, a piece that references Nyonga Township yet was previously unknown to her.
The resulting attention led to further high-profile engagements in 2015 and 2016, among them an appearance with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome under Antonio Pappano for the world premiere of Luca Francesconi’s cantata Bread, Water, and Salt, which sets a speech by former South African president Nelson Mandela. Her second album, Arias, appeared in 2016. Her European and American credits continued to accumulate, culminating in a 2019 Dallas Opera debut as Mimi in La bohème, a role that has become closely identified with the singer. She returned to the studio in 2023 for the Signum Classics release A Celebration of Paul Reade.
Albums
