Peta Stewart
Once a tenor always a tenor? Not a chance! Mandla Mndebele, one of three Belvedere Singing Competition prizewinners performing with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra in the Duet Gala on October 24 at Artscape Opera is now a baritone, and happy to be one!
The concert, a fundraiser for the Duet Endowment, formed to create a sustainable future for the orchestra and Cape Town Opera, also features Levy Sekgapane (tenor) and Noluvuyiso Mpofu.
Mndebele grew up singing, with his mother, with his family in Mpumalanga and was chosen not only to sing in the local school choir when he was 13, but to sing in a community choir – which was to compete in the National Choir Festival. The problem is the age limit was 18, but his size was as big as his tenor voice and he sang a solo!
His range – from Eb to A
He won competitions throughout his schooling, joined the Gauteng Choristers and was taken under the wing of its chairman, Koos Mhlongo. (Mhlongo is still a great supporter, even coming to Cape Town to hear him sing whenever he can in productions such as La Traviata and the significant Johan Botha concert the CPO presented last year – the last major one of his career.)
With Mhlongo’s advice, and since he could sing from Eb to A, his range was big enough to encompass not only tenor and baritone, but bass – but he settled on baritone. Mhlongo also helped him enrol in the Tshwane University of Technology where he graduated with a Diploma in Opera. It was there that he met Fikile Mthwetwa, who has been his soul mate for the last 7 years and mother of their 5 year-old son Aphiwe.
Mndebele is a thoughtful young man, one who misses Fikile’s support, for she has not been there to witness the glory of his most recent victory – third place and audience prize in the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition. She is singing with a group called La Divas on the islands of Kos and Rhodes in Greece and won’t be home until November, so she missed his disbelief when they announced in Russian who won third prize and had to be pushed forward! He has just accepted the applause (he should have been used to it because he was one of few to have to take a second curtain call after singing his final aria!) when his name was called out again – for the audience prize!
Cape Town Opera
His main prize is an engagement in the Opera House in Erfurt in Germany, where Siyabulela Ntlale is still singing, having won the same prize a few years ago at the Belvedere. So the win is bound to open many doors.
Ntlale and Sekgapane, are, like Mndebele, products of teacher Hanna van Schalkwyk and who is helping Mndebele perfect his technique, he says.
Both Mndebele and Ms Mthwetwa came to Cape Town in 2013 to join Cape Town Opera. He says that he was in a taxi back to Pretoria late in 2012, having been with his partner and son when the call came from Christine Crouse to say his audition had been successful.
“I was too scared to ask if Fikile had been successful, too,” he says, but not five minutes later Fikile phoned – she too had been successful. They sang together in Postcards from Morocco, and he has sung in many more productions such as Crown in Porgy and Bess which played in grand houses in Bordeaux, Barcelona, Madrid and Buenos Aires. He also played the role of Mandela in The Mandela Trilogy in the UK and will tour with it to Hong Kong and Dubai later this year. He is also participating in the competition Neue Stimmen in Germany in October, and auditioning for agents and opera houses overseas.
He is also participating in Voices of South Africa, a competition for singers which will have its finals in Wellington on October 22. So while Mandla’s wish is to further his career in as many opera houses in the world as his can, he says that he is Proudly South African and home will always be home!
Who: Mandla Mndebele, baritone
What: Duet Gala concert with the Cape Town Philharmonic and Cape Town Opera
Where: Artscape Opera Theatre, Foreshore, Cape Town
When: 24 October at 8pm
Info, book tickets: http://bit.ly/2iEuRoA
WS
