Dr Lisa Engelbrecht

BMus Cape Town, PGDip RCM, MMus Illinois, DMus Cape Town

Dr Lisa Engelbrecht is a Vocal Coach/Répétiteur at OperaUCT under the directorship of Prof Jeremy Silver. Lisa, apart from coaching singing students and lecturing in Lyric Diction (German) at UCT, performs regularly as a vocal accompanist in South Africa and abroad. She is a member of the teaching faculty at the International Lyric Academy summer programme in Vicenza, Italy and is a guest vocal coach at the both the Royal Academy and Royal Colleges of Music, London.  Lisa has also worked as coach/répétiteur for the Grange Festival in Hampshire and has regularly coached and played for productions of Cape Town Opera where she was vocal coach/répétiteur on numerous operatic productions before moving on to work at the University of Cape Town. Similarly, before being appointed as a permanent member of staff at SACM she coached and accompanied rehearsals for many productions as well as accompanied numerous auditions and concerts. She has also been instrumental in putting together fundraising concerts with students and alumni of OperaUCT both locally and in London and regularly puts together concerts with students for various Classical music festivals around the country.

Her educational background includes post graduate study at the Royal College of Music, London (P.G Dip in Advanced Performance Répétiteur), University of Illinois (MMus in Vocal Accompaniment) and UCT (DMus in Collaborative Performance and Thesis) with apprenticeships at San Francisco Opera (Merola program) and Glimmerglass Opera (New York). She has also worked as vocal coach/accompanist for the Jeunes Voix de Rhìn (Opera National du Rhin), and British Youth Opera. Lisa also trained as a soprano with Emma Renzi and uses that training to add further insight to her vocal coaching skills. Lisa performs regularly with her students in Mauritius where under the auspices of the Société Musicale she also conducts Masterclasses with singers on the island.  Lisa, as pianist and soprano is also part of a classical vocal duo “The Opera Angels” with British mezzo soprano, Lindsay Thomson, established in 2019.