Sakhiwe Mkosana
baritone
© Barbara Aumüller
Sakhiwe Mkosana, from South Africa, joined Oper Frankfurt's Opera Studio in 2023, making his debut in a new production of Kurt Weill's The Tsar wants his Photograph Takenmwhich was followed by the Imperial Commissioner in Madama Butterfly. Last season he sang 1st Flemmish Deputy in Don Carlos and 1st Nazarene / Cappadocian in Salome. His roles during the 2024/25 season include High Priest to Jupiter in Handel's Hercules, Ceprano in Rigoletto, the Master of the Masquerade (Nielsen's Masquerade), the Police Commissioner in a new production of von Dittersdorf's Doctor and Pharmacist and the Doge of Venice in Rossini's Bianca e Falliero. In the summer of 2023 he sang the title role in the first performance in Germany of a Namibian opera - Chief Hijangua in the Rundfunkhaus in Berlin, a role he sang at the world premiere in Namibia's National Theatre. In the summer of 2024 he made his debut with the Birmingham Opera Company in a new production of Tippett's New Year, directed by Keith Warner. He studied for his bachelor of music with Gwyneth Lloyd at Fort Hare University before joining Cape Town Opera's chorus in 2019 and took part in a production of African Passion, which went on tour in the Netherlands; the same year he took part in Orphée et Eurydice and toured Germany in a concert version of Porgy and Bess. Other productions with Cape Town Opera included La Bohème (2020) and Britten's Curlew River (2021). He then went to Cape Town University (UCT) where he gained his Advanced Diploma in Opera Performance with the help of Prof. Jeremy Silver and his singing teacher Patrick Tikolo and sang Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte). He finished studying for his post grad in operatic singing there in 2022, sang the title role in the world premiere of a Namibian opera Chief Hijangua in the National Theatre of Namibia and Melisso in a joint UCT / Cape Town Opera production of Handel's Alcina. He won the 2022 Eva Kleinitz Prize at the 8th International Opera Singing Competition in Portofino, Italy, the 2020 Schock Foundation Opera Competition and came second at the 2022 Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition in Gütersloh.