A South African soprano fuses technique with raw emotion

The South African singer is unfazed by the traditions that have long followed this storied music genre. “You’d have some sopranos where you get into their dressing room and there is steam and oils everywhere, and you feel like you are in a Buddhist monastery,” she says as she buzzes about her love of Lizzo, the audacious American singer/rapper. “When I take a shower, I put some Lizzo tunes on!”

From township to opera house

Despite her down-to-earth demeanor, for Matshikiza the pull of opera was in the discipline and dedication to the craftsmanship involved in elevating the humble human voice to new heights. “The reason I sing opera is due to my fascination with the development of the operatic voice – to be able to do something I couldn’t do three years ago,” she says. “If, technically, you don’t know exactly how to reach those top notes, you won’t be able to grow as an opera singer.”

Yet learning operatic technique is something that came to the soprano relatively late. Matshikiza’s childhood, spent in the townships around Cape Town, was a far cry from the European opera houses in which she is now a regular figure. “I lived in the slums,” she says of her years growing up in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Songs of home

As with many fascinating back stories, the soprano often feels weary of the attention it receives. “Sometimes, it gets a bit boring when I have to talk about my past again and again,” she says, but adds: “At the same time, it’s part of who I am, and I wouldn’t be me if it wasn’t for that.”

Indeed, the singer’s past reverberates in her music. For her first studio album, “Voice of Hope,” she combined elements of South African folk music with operatic singing – what the singer describes as a fragile balance between improvisation and strict operatic codes. “Some of the [folk] music didn’t even have written notes; the bands would improvise and a folk singer would just be singing,” she says. “[In opera] you have to sing straight, whereas in folk music where your voice sits naturally is totally different.” Of crafting a distinct artistic identity, Matshikiza says that it comes down to a delicate juggling of instinct, technique, emotion – and practice. “I practice almost every day,” she says. “To build an operatic voice takes time. There are a lot of people who lost their careers and voice because they didn’t really understand what they were doing to produce the voice they were producing.”

Crafting emotion with technique

With limited resources available to her as a young singer, Matshikiza honed her craft through imitation and “just giving emotion.” Now, she sees it a bit differently. “I think it wasn’t the most correct way,” she says. “The correct way to start is to first build a technique and then express emotions – not express emotions without a solid technique.”

For the soprano, melding technique with emotion, attending to detail while sounding natural, is the crux of operatic craft. The magic, she says, is in the mixture, when your technical proficiency guides your raw emotions in song. “Technique alone is boring,” Matshikiza says.