A Footscray opera singer could be jetting to New York after reaching the final of a prestigious scholarship competition.
Elizabeth Lewis is one of six finalists in a concert this Sunday for The Opera Foundation for young Australians 2015 Lady Fairfax New York Scholarship.
The winner will receive $43,000 and the chance to study in New York with internationally acclaimed vocal, language and movement coaches.
Ms Lewis said singing had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember.
“I always sang as a child,” she said. “When I was 12 I asked my mum if I could take lessons and when I was 15 I went to see an opera and thought ‘this is for me’,” she said.
“Tosca was the first opera I saw and I thought ‘I could do that, let’s do it’. I decided on the spot.”
The soprano’s big break came in 2009, when she was selected at the age of 21 to perform in the chorus in Verdi’s La Traviata for Opera Queensland.
“A few singers with more experience really protected me; they taught me a lot about stage craft,” she said.
“It was really exciting, I had a dresser, they put a wig on me – all these things I had never had.”
Ms Lewis became a member of the Opera Q Studio in 2013 and joined Victorian Opera last year as one of their developing artists.
This year she has already won the Sydney Opera House Opera Award and the More Than Opera development prize.
But the chance to travel to New York is icing on the cake and could provide an enormous boost to her career.
“There isn’t enough work for everyone here in Australia, so you have to go overseas,” she said.
“I have a particular kind of soprano so I have to go overseas to polish it off, because of the repertoire. When things are so far away for us, cost is very much a sticking point.”
Ms Lewis has selected the song Divinités du Styx from Christoph Gluck’s opera Alceste for her performance before the judges at the Verbrugghen Hall of Sydney Conservatorium of Music on Sunday.
Whatever the outcome, Ms Lewis is delighted her talents have been recognised.
“I won’t have time to be nervous,” she said. “You run on adrenaline; it all becomes a blur.”
