UCT Alumni Shine at Cape Town Opera Festival

South African College of Music, University of Cape Town, alumnus Conrad Asman’s first opera, ‘Trial by Media,’ was recently performed with great success at Artscape as part of Cape Town Opera’s ‘Shorts – A Festival of Pocket Operas.’ Conrad, who lives in London, where he completed a Doctorate at the Royal Academy of Music, flew out to Cape Town to assist in the final rehearsals and attend the performances. As undergraduate student, Conrad won all the major composition prizes at the SACM, and he has gone on to win South Africa’s most important prize for young composers, the SA Music Rights Organisation Overseas Scholarship, as well as a number of international prizes.

The libretto of the opera, by the late Schalk Schoombie, deals with the issues raised by the sensational trial of Oscar Pistorius, the paralympic blade-runner, who was convicted of killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Consisting largely of excerpts from the court proceedings and social media posts, it manages to avoid sensationalism and introduces a number of themes, including those of gender-based violence and justice. The production was directed by Fred Abrahams and Marcel Meyer, with outstanding musical direction from the piano by Jose Dias, another musician with a long association with the SACM.

The main roles in the production, described by a critic as ‘a brave and audacious piece of operatic theatre,’ were brilliantly interpreted by baritone Van Wyk Venter as Oscar and soprano Brittany Smith as Reeva. Brittany, also a graduate of the SACM, and winner of Fleur du Cap and Artes awards, is House Soloist at Cape Town Opera, where she has starred in a number of major productions, including Le nozze di Figaro, L’elisir d’amore, The Pearl Fishers and La traviata.

Another highlight of the festival was soprano Janelle Visagie’s riveting performance in Poulenc’s one-woman opera La voix humaine, directed by Magdalene Minnaar, again with José Dias at the piano. Both Janelle and Magdalene are graduates of the SACM. Janelle has won a number of awards, including two Fleur du Caps, one of which was for this opera. Magdalene is the Artistic Director at Cape Town Opera, but manages to combine this with exceptional contributions both as singer and director to the South African musical landscape.