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| Helen Sherman, courtesy of Hanya Chlala |
Twenty opera singers from across the globe have been selected to compete in this year’s prestigious BBC Cardiff Singer of the World and one of the select finalists is local Bathurst talent Helen Sherman. Helen will be performing in Cardiff when the competition gets underway in June and she will have the added distinction of performing in front of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, internationally renowned singer, who takes up her role as Patron of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World for the first time.
Securing a top 20 place against the original six hundred opera and concert singers who auditioned for a place in the competition is no mean feat, however Helen is no stranger to the hard work and discipline.
Helen was always determined - she was like that as a little girl says her proud father, Brian Sherman.
Helen, a mezzo-soprano, debuted at Bathurst Eisteddfod, singing, dancing and playing the piano at the age of three! She began singing lessons at the Mitchell Conservatorium, learning from Olga Reeder and then graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2003.
Since then her professional singing development and career has gone from strength to strength, most recently giving debut concerts at Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, Bridgewater Hall and Royal Albert Hall and appeared with Roger Vignoles and Mikhail Zemtsov in the Cambridge Summer Recital series.
At the RNCM she sang the roles of Hélène (Offenbach‘s La Belle Hélène), Sesto (Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito) and Cyrus (Handel's Belshazzar), the latter in a co-production with Manchester Camerata.
She has also recorded with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra as part of an International Opera Productions prize and has broadcast a recital for Australia's ABC Classic FM.
Young Concert Artists Trust has a page about Helen, which gives links to recordings of her singing the ever-popular Une voce poco fa from Rossini's Barber of Seville and Va, liasse couler mes larmes from Massenet's Werther.
(Clicking on the hyperlinked text should take you directly to the recordings. If it takes too long, you can right click and save the files to your computer and then listen to them.)
Mitchell Conservatorium staff and students wish Helen all the very best for her performance to take out the Cardiff Singer of the World 2011 competition.
