MIRUSIA Louwerse thought she was going to be an opera singer, but life had a more enticing prospect in sight for the Queensland soprano with the voice of an angel.

Lead soprano since 2007 for the sensationally-popular Dutch violinist and conductor André Rieu, she tours the world with Rieu in an enviable international career that has also seen her billed as the only classical artist with an Aria number-one chart award.

“The way we can fly everywhere so quickly it doesn’t matter where you are, you can have a career from anywhere,” Mirusia tells “CityNews” by phone from Brisbane, where she now lives with her Dutch-born husband Youri Wystyrk.

Though she does admit: “If I had to sing tomorrow in Amsterdam that would be a bit of a problem, but I’m always booked up so far ahead.”

She will be performing at The Playhouse on Saturday, August 6, with her chamber orchestra and her chosen Australian pianist and arranger Graeme Press (musical director for Judith Durham).

Over two hours, she will perform “classical-crossover” songs from her albums.

“This will be a solo concert, I’ll be performing a whole mix of repertoire, some classical opera, some musical theatre, some of my own compositions – a mixed bag of music for the whole audience to enjoy.”

That’s pretty much in the same tradition as Rieu, darling of the crowds and scorned by connoisseurs, who claim he has brought music down to a common level. Favourite Mirusia numbers include “Mio Babbino Caro”, “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” and the title number of her new DVD, “This Time Tomorrow”.

Classically trained with tenor Gregory Massingham at Queensland Conservatorium, where she says it was “absolutely a blast”, she was all set to take her opera studies to a higher level when fate intervened.

At age 21, she won the Dame Joan Sutherland Scholarship, the youngest singer to have done so.

“The money prize is $10,000 and they give it to someone they feel can use it to further their career,” she says. So she used it to record a debut EP, “She Walks in Beauty”, in 2006.

“That that played out very well, it was that EP that André heard,” she says.

There’s a Dutch connection. Mirusia is the daughter of immigrants from the Netherlands and speaks Dutch fluently.

An aunty in the old country wrote to Rieu and told him she had a niece in Australia who could sing.

“André looked at my website and thought: ‘This is great’.”

“I was touring with a show called ‘Scotland the Brave’ when he called me up and said: ‘Hi, my name is André Rieu and I really like your voice’ – I didn’t believe it was André, but the rest is history.”

She’s been working with him for nearly nine years.

“So far, it’s been a very exciting working relationship, I can’t wait to work with them again,” she says of the glamorous, crowd-pleasing concerts that have made both her and Rieu household names.

The gorgeous costumes, the crowds, the adulation – these are all absorbing to a young musician, and Mirusia is only 31, but for a classically-trained singer, there’s always a nagging doubt.

“In the conservatorium I studied operatic voice and I’d love to perform in opera, but at this point it’s quite impossible,” she says.

Mirusia Louwerse, The Playhouse, Saturday, August 6. Bookings to canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.