VA Opera’s “Rigoletto” Teaches Hannah How to Sing Opera

Fikile Mvinjelwa, South Africa’s foremost baritone, has sung for President Nelson Mandela, President Thabo Mbeki and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Last night, he sang with AltDaily’s Hannah Serrano.

Mvinjelwa, starring as the title character in Virginia Opera’s Rigoletto, generously spent some time teaching our sweet, caramel covered Hannah Opera Singing 101. Kudos to Hannah for being such a good sport.

Mvinjelwa has come a long way from his upbringing in the Langa township of Cape Town. He regularly performs at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, and has taken on the title roles in Rigoletto and Nabucco, Griot in Masque, Porgy in Porgy and Bess, Orestes in Elektra, Zurga in The Pearl Fishers, and Germont in La Traviata for the Cape Town Opera.

This is Mvinjelwa’s Virginia Opera debut.

Rigoletto, by Verdi, will be sung in Italian with English subtitles. It opens October 2nd.

For more information on the Virginia Opera, click here.

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ABOUT THE WRITER
Jesse is the editor in chief of AltDaily, and he's going to take this bio seriously, but not so seriously that he's going to continue in the third person. I've been involved with a bunch of local projects and civic groups in various roles, including: Hampton Roads, The Canvas; Art | Everywhere, Street Performance in Norfolk; Survive Norfolk; Hampton Roads Pride/Out in the Park; Bike Norfolk; re:Vision Norfolk, and such. I originally came to Norfolk as a Perry Morgan fellow in ODU's creative writing program. Before that I bummed around quite a bit, writing stacks of books that never got published, hitchhiking, couchsurfing, riding the Greyhound up down and back across this country. Some of my favorite jobs and volunteer gigs have included working on organic farms in Ireland; being first mate on an old sail boat in Holland; working at a long-term home for young men in South Africa; being a journalist and high school teacher in New York and California; washing dishes in Yosemite National Park; teaching English in DC and swimming in Florida; and interning at ESPN in Bristol, which was much less cool that you'd want it to be. My career highlights have been having three of my op-eds run in the New York Times, and being the executive producer of a six-part docu-drama on BET. Because school is cool I have three master's degrees (ODU for MFA, NYU for magazine journalism, University of Connecticut for secondary English education). I live in Norfolk because I believe in its potential. Email your ideas or nicely couched criticism to jesse@altdaily.com.
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