PETA STEWART
When you say the names of Bryn Terfel and Dimitry Hvorostovsky in one breath, you can add another, Lukhanyo Moyake. For Lukhanyo shares the starlight that falls upon today’s great singers who make the final round of such important competitions as the Cardiff Singer of the World. That was in June, and it interrupted his studying the score for the role of Steuerman, which he sings with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) in Cape Town Opera’s (CTO) production of Der fliegende Holländer in August at Artscape Opera House.
‘Mandela Trilogy’ in Dubai
Although Moyake grew up singing, in competitions in junior school, singing as a way of life didn’t enter his mind until high school. A passer-by knocked on his door, attracted by his golden voice, and asked him to sing in the police choir in Queenstown. He did. A conductor brought in to that choir told him he was wasted there and asked him to join the Technikon Choir. He did, and for the first time realized that he actually had a good voice. He never sang for his high school choir!
Instead of following the Eastern Cape tradition which sees all good singers going to study at UCT, he chose to go to the University of KZN, having already given up studying IT in PE and then music, but not opera, at Fort Hare. In Durban, he started dating his high school friend, the soprano Siphamandla Yakupa, and married her in 2011. Having studied in Durban for four years, he then went back to the Eastern Cape tradition and came to UCT to do a Post-Graduate diploma and then signed on at the Cape Town Opera Studio. He loves singing with Siphamandla, since they help each other a lot. “We understand where we struggle and can help each other through.”
Since then he has sung in many CTO Operas, with CTO overseas (he is off later this year to sing in the Mandela Trilogy in Dubai and Hong Kong, and in CTO concerts in London and Germany), and recently sung the role of Don José in Carmen in Portugal with Sarah Jane Brandon as Michaela.
Moyake is nothing if not forthright. “I never lie, but I love lying when I am on the stage. I take on the personality of the person I am singing.” In Alfredo, a role in La Traviata which he sung with UCT, he was cavalier, caring, and then heartbroken in a couple of hours, in Italian. In March, he will again be cavalier, caring and heartbroken, in English, when he sings the same role in London with the English National Opera. What makes this interesting is that he has not sung an Italian opera in English before and hopes not to black out and revert to Italian in the London production!
Mentor Ean Smit
About Ean Smit, repetiteur and mentor, “Wow. He was much more than my coach. He was my therapist. I could take anything to him. He taught me just about everything I know.”
About Angelo Gobbato and Kamal Khan, who coached him at UCT, he says: “They scared me but they taught me so much. I saw how much they taught me from the time of Traviata to when I entered the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition.” He made the finals in 2016. “The next opera I did with them was easy!”
Gobbato taught him how to understand what he sings – he sings in Italian, German, French and now English. He taught him to take the original text and above it translate it into English and below into Xhosa. That’s stuck with him and he still translates new roles into Xhosa.
About competitions: “They are so stressful but they get you recognized. After I took third place in the Neue Stimmen competition in Germany in 2015, I was invited to sing in the Emmerich Competition the next year. I won it. Now people know my name.”
That’s sad for Cape Town, for although he sees Cape Town Opera as his home (he has been here 7 years), there is an offer on the table that may take him (and Siphamandla) away from our shores. The cold European winters don’t daunt him – he was brought up in Lady Frere which sees snow every winter.
Moyake has always wanted to go to Europe to expand his horizons. “I also want to make way for the next generation of singers,” he says.
He has also never sung Wagner before and cannot wait! “When I sing that glorious aria that everyone knows, I feel I have come home.”
What: Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
Where: Artscape Opera House, Foreshore, Cape Town
Who: Cape Town Opera with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, Tim Murray (conductor), Jaco Venter (Dutchman), Johanni van Oostrum (Senta), Samuel Sakker (Erik), Gregory Frank (Daland), Lukhanyo Moyake (Steuermann), and Violina Anguelov and Nonhlanhla Yende (Mary) and Cape Town Opera Chorus. Director Matthew Wild; Designer Michael Mitchell; Chorus Master Marvin Kernelle; Lighting Kobus Roussouw; Choreographer Celeste Botha
When: 17 August 7.30 pm, 19 August 6pm, 23 August 7.30pm, 26 August 6pm, 2017
Pre-opera talks: Rodney Trudgeon 45 min before curtain up, Side Opera Bar, 1st Floor
Book:
http://online.computicket.com/web/event/der_fliegende_hollander/1097768009/0/767311Web: www.cpo.org.za
WS
