Sibongile mngoma biography of rory

One of the highlights of her career and once-in-a-lifetime experience was performing with Luciano Pavarotti in 2005 at Centurion, Pretoria as part of the Italian maestro’s 40-city Worldwide Farewell Celebration Tour.

I thought he was being very unkind to me because all the other children were out in the yard playing.

She qualified at the universities of Zululand and the Witwatersrand in both music and personnel management. In my professional years the music came back and it began to make sense.

She qualified at the universities of Zululand and the Witwatersrand in both music and personnel management.

She approached the South African Music Rights Organisation to have the music commissioned and they approached Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo, who arranged eight songs from Magogo’s very extensive repertoire, and Professor Peter Klatzow, who first created a piano accompaniment and later orchestrated the song cycle.

Sibongile made everyone love her – no mean feat in the world of singers, especially opera singers.

She also sang at the inauguration as well as farewell dinner of the former governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni. Born into a musical family, her grandfather, Khabi Mngoma was a renowned composer and conductor of classical and choral music. She went on to have a distinguished career as a singer as well as an arts advocate and member of numerous national arts committees.

As she described it in the sleeve notes of Sibongile Khumalo:

My dad made me sit at her feet to listen to her play ugubhu and sing.

No other professional singer, for example, has captured the husky, throaty low register of Zulu umakweyana and ugubhu bow singers. Opera roles include Zandile in Temming’s Enoch Prophet of God, First Boy in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Mimi in Puccini’s La Boheme, Zerlina and later Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Michaela in Bizet’s Carmen, The Voice in Breytebach’s Johnny Cockroach, Arbace in Bach’s Catone in Utica (sang on the CD recording which is distributed internationally), Didon in Piccini’s Didon (sang on CD recording also distributed internationally), Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneus, Idamante in Mozart’s Idomeneo, The first lady and Queen Silomo in James Khumalo’s Princess Magogo.

In Italy under the directorship of world acclaimed South African conductor, maestro Arnold Bosman, she sang the roles of Arbace, Idamante, Donna Elvira, and Didon to critical acclaim even earning her a front page honour in Italy’s foremost newspaper Curiera della Sera for her debut in Didon.

Some of her regular clients include top car brands, banks and the South African government.

UShaka kaSenzangakhona also toured Europe in 2004 as part of South Africa celebrations of the ten years of democracy. On the popular music front, she has been heard in extravaganzas like Skouspel, Afrikiti, Starlight Pops, Bravo China – in collaboration with the Chinese government, the Last Night at the Proms, and Two Nations Celebrate in London – singing for Nelson Mandela and the Queen of England.

She has sung at the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Concert Hall and the Colliseum in London, opera houses in Bari and Milan in Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Cannes, Munich, Rome and all the major opera houses and venues in South Africa.

Other productions include Mothobi Mutloatse’s Nkosi the Healing Song, Andrew Lloyd Webber in Concert as well as Rodger’s and Hammerstein in Concert.