VISITORS to this year‘s Klein Karoo Klassique festival, which celebrates classical music, traditional Karoo dishes, wines and visual arts, will be treated to a gala performance featuring two of South Africa‘s rising opera stars.

Pretty Yende, who has just won all four awards at the international Hans Gabor Belvedere competition in Vienna, Austria, will be one of a number of musicians performing at the festival in Oudtshoorn from August 14 to 16.

Yende, 24, who won the opera and operetta awards in Vienna, was also chosen as the media and the public‘s favourite performer. She will perform on August 16 with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra.

In Vienna, she competed against 159 finalists chosen from 3000 international competitors. She has come a long way since her days leading the church choir in her home town of Piet Retief. Last year, she graduated cum laude in her diploma in opera studies at the University of Cape Town under the tutorship of Prof Virginia Davids. She also won the Netherlands International Singing Competition.

In 2002, she won the solo voice category of the Tirisano School Choral Eisteddfod at the tender age of 17 and received the deacon‘s award for the best female opera student at UCT. She has tackled such diverse roles as Helena in A Midsummer Night‘s Dream at the Cape Town Opera House and Magda in La Rondine at the Baxter Theatre.

Yende, who initially wanted to be a chartered accountant but found her purpose in life after she won a scholarship to study music, describes South Africans as a singing nation.

Given Nkosi, another South African who made it to the finals in the Hans Gabor Belvedere competition, will share the stage with Yende at the Klein Karoo Klassique.

Nkosi was born in Witbank and enrolled at the SA College of Music in Cape Town for a performer‘s diploma in opera under the direction of Prof Angelo Gobbato. He appeared as the soloist with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra during the 2004 youth music festival and performed with the Tirisano National Youth Choir at the Choir Olympics in Bremen.

Nkosi has played the role of Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte and performed in operas by Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi and Mendelssohn.

In 2007, he visited Bulgaria to study a master‘s class under the leadership of Raina Kabaivanska and also performed as soloist with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra. That same year he was chosen as one of the 100 most successful men in South Africa.

The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra‘s performances at the festival will be directed by world-leading director Theodore Kunchar. He is the artistic and main director of two of Europe‘s foremost orchestras, the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra.

The festival, which was launched last year, is chaired by businessman Nic Barrow, who said although opportunities would be created for local musicians to perform, the focus would remain on classical music. “At all other festivals in our country pop music is performed. That is why we selected classical music as our niche.”