WHEN Canberra soprano Katrina Wiseman steps on stage in the National Opera’s coming production of Handel’s “Alcina”, it will be her big break.

Wiseman, who is playing the “pants role” of the boy Oberto, will be joining Australian divas Emma Matthews and Rachelle Durkin, with Handel specialist Graham Abbott as conductor.

“I have three arias, but they’re all building to this fantastic musical moment,” Wiseman says. “My part is not massive, but there’s been this whole growth.”

Very different from the old days, acting now matters in opera.

“The more I got into it, so much of singing is driven by the emotions… I can’t share them by just standing there. Acting is a natural extension of the performance and a lot of the mentors I met helped me express the various characters and how to connect with the audience,” she says.

Wiseman has an unusual background in that she recently graduated from the ANU with a double degree in music and pure mathematics.

“I liked having the two really contrasting studies in my life… singing satisfied my emotional, creative side, while mathematics was regular and logical,” she says.

But it was inevitable that singing would win out. 

She started studying voice at Radford College during year 9 then took part in many of the school’s productions. Later, while at the ANU, she performed with Canberra Youth Orchestra, the National Opera and as a Wesley Scholar. Very recently she wowed audiences as Josephine in “HMS Pinafore” for Queanbeyan Players.

All the while, Wiseman was performing opera roles with Canberra Opera’s “Gianni Schicchi” and “Suor Angelica” and in National Opera’s pocket operas “Le Nozze di Figaro” and “Die Zauberflote” as well as singing in the ensemble for “La Clemenza di Tito”.

In 2019, Wiseman trained at the Vocal Academy of Orvieto young artist program in south-western Umbria, in Italy.

“I was overseas for about six to seven weeks, and it was my first time in Italy,” she says. “There were three weeks of the course, and then we travelled around regional opera houses all over the country – such amazing performance venues.” 

While in the vicinity, she also combined a visit to family in the UK with a masterclass at the Royal Academy of Music.

At 24, she recognises that she is still very young for an opera singer, but is grateful for the opportunities she’s getting now as she heads into the lyric soprano repertoire. 

“Alcina” is one of Handel’s “opera seria [serious]” and is a wild excursion into enchantment, sorceresses and abandoned lovers who’ve been turned into wild beasts and a heroine in search of her vanished paramour.

It is, according to director Peter Coleman-Wright, the opera that turned Dame Joan Sutherland into “La Stupenda” after she sang the role in a production by Franco Zeffirelli at La Fenice, Venice, in February, 1960, and at the Dallas Opera in November of the same year.

With that in mind, during the run, the company will have a small exhibition of Sutherland’s performance dresses and other items loaned by the Arts Centre Melbourne and Opera Australia.

“Alcina”, Llewellyn Hall, December 8 and 10.