Highlights from the Operas ("Brotherhood in Opera")

ABOUT

Tenor Makudupanyane Senaoana and baritone Siphe Kwani present a mix of much loved opera arias and duets, accompanied on the piano by Lisa Engelbrecht. Makudu has just won the Fleur du Cap Award for best Male Opera Performance and Siphe is the winner of the UCT Friends of CT Opera Award.

South African tenor Makudu Senaoana is steadily making his mark throughout Europe and North America as a gifted and versatile performer. In the previous season, Makudu made his debut with the Dutch National Opera: in the world premiere of Anansi by South African composer Neo Muyanga, and the opera house’s Celebrating Diversity: Black Achievement Month. Senaoana also performed as 2nd Jew in Salome with Tulsa Opera. 

Makudu makes a return to the Dutch National Opera this season for their Be Opera project, and will feature largely in Opera Ithaca’s summer opera festival, performing in their productions of Nabucco (Ismaele), Highway 1, USA (Nate), and Proving Up (Miles Zegner). Makudu enjoys a close relationship with director William Kentridge, with whom he will tour South Africa and the East Coast of the USA in performances of The Head and the Load, a genre-defying experience centered around Africans in WWI, initially commissioned in part by the Park Avenue Armory.

Baritone Siphe Kwani was Introduced to choral music in high school, and in 2015 he won the first place in the Western Cape Choral Music Association Solo Development Competition. In 2018 he performed the role of Count Robinson in Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto in the SACM’s Opera Kaleidoscope production.

He has performed various chorus roles in collaboration with Cape Town Opera, including Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. In 2019 Siphe performed three roles in the South Africa College of Music (SACM) Opera Kaleidoscope: Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème, Henry in Weil’s Ice Cream Sextet from Street Scene and Famigliare 3 in Seneca’s death scene in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea.

Siphe won both first prize and the audience prize in the 2019 Schock Foundation Prize for Singing. In 2020 Siphe performed in a masterclass with the famous New Zealand Soprano Kiri Te Kanawa , also in 2020 he performed the Role Guglielmo in Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte in Collaboration with Cape Town Opera, and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi with the Operatunity Company. 2021 He performed a role of Ferryman in Britten’s Curlew River as a Ferryman. In 2022 , March he won the first prize in the friends of Cape Town Opera (FoCTO ) bursary competition.

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