FOR  Iranian-born singer Agnes Sarkis, playing the great mezzo-soprano role of Suzuki in the coming Handa Opera on the Harbour production of “Madama Butterfly” is the achievement of a lifetime.

For the motorbike-riding opera singer was supposed to be a civil engineer and her transition from Tehran to the main stages of Australia has been quite a journey.

Sarkis is no stranger to Canberra audiences. She was one of the three mezzo sopranos sharing the role of Carmen in Opera Australia’s travelling production of Bizet’s opera seen here in 2021.

Elsewhere, she’s played the third lady in Mozart “The Magic Flute”, Cherubino in “The Marriage of Figaro”, and her present role, Suzuki, in the last outing of the Moffat Oxenbould production of the Puccini opera at the Capitol Theatre in 2017.

Suzuki is a powerful role, not unlike that of Musetta in Puccini’s “La Bohème”, the one who provides understanding to the final struggles of the heroine. By the end of the opera, she is Butterfly’s only friend and ally.

It’s a magnificent part for Sarkis, but she wasn’t always supposed to be an opera singer.

Born of Armenian heritage in the Caspian Sea region of northern Iran, she won a place in a prestigious engineering school at a Tehran university and ended up, on graduation, working for a construction company for several years.

But she just didn’t feel it was her, so all the while took classes, played piano and sang in a choir, not easy in Iran where public singing by women is restricted.

“Music was my hobby back then, but it didn’t feel like I had anywhere to go, I was getting nowhere, until someone suggested that I send my details to the Sydney Conservatorium.”

She recorded a DVD of three arias , including Carmen’s “Habanera”,  immediately won a place and a scholarship, flew to Sydney, enrolled in an English course and started her degree at The Con.

“My teacher told me I should do an audition for Opera Australia, so they got me on the audition list and I never gave up trying.”

Sarkis missed out first time round, but it gave her a chance to do a postgraduate year at The Con, then after auditioning a second time, she got a letter offering her the role of the third lady in “The Magic Flute” for a national tour which came here in 2014. She also got a chance to sing in the chorus in the first “Carmen” on Sydney Harbour in 2013 and then again in the chorus of “Madama Butterfly” in 2014, the same production we’ll be seeing by Barcelona director, Àlex Ollé.

“I loved it,” Agnes reports.

After that, she did the third lady again, got the famous “pants” role of Cherubino and then the mainstage part of Suzuki in the Capitol Theatre production.

Suzuki, she says, is an important character, the person who holds everything together. She’s the one who tells Cio Cio San, Butterfly, that her husband the American Pinkerton won’t be coming back and that he doesn’t even know he has a son.

“She’s like a sister to Butterfly and a maid only when other people are around,” Sarkis says. “She’s the only person who tells the truth, who says, ‘we don’t have any money, he is not coming’.”

To her as a singer,  the high point is definitely “The Flower Duet” with Butterfly in Act II,  then the trio with the American Consul, Sharpless and Pinkerton in Act III before the scene where Suzuki drags the child  off stage and Cio Cio San kills herself.

“Madama Butterfly”, Opera Australia, Mrs Macquarie’s Steps, Sydney, March 24 to April 23.