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Natasha Wilson

Natasha Te Rupe Wilson is a New Zealand soprano opera singer of Māori and Pākehā heritage.

Life
Wilson was born and brought up in Auckland, New Zealand. Her father was Māori and her mother of European heritage. She affiliates to the iwi Te Arawa and Ngāpuhi. Brian Wilson instilled a love of singing in her and her three siblings, singing show tunes and soundtracks with them in the car and teaching them to harmonise from an early age; he encouraged his daughter to pursue classical music as a career. Natasha Wilson's first exposure to classical singing was from a DVD of The Phantom of the Opera her father brought home when she was 12, especially the aria "Think of Me". Wilson attended Westlake Girls High School, and was taught music by Morag Atchison, a lecturer in voice at the University of Auckland. == Career ==
Career
From 2016 Wilson was supported and mentored by the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation. In 2017 Wilson won the Dame Malvina Major Foundation Dunedin Aria contest. She was asked to be a soprano soloist for a Spanish Baroque concert series with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in Sydney, in a performance that incorporated contemporary circus performers. She returned to sing in the orchestra's Bittersweet Obsessions concert. The same year she received a scholarship to attend Patricia Hurley’s Italian for NZ Opera Singers Masterclasses and Concerts in Italy as part of the Dame Malvina Major Foundation Opera Studies Programme. In 2018 Wilson was a semi-finalist in the Lexus Song Quest and became a Dame Malvina Major Foundation Emerging Artist with New Zealand Opera. In September she was soprano soloist in a Dunedin Symphony Orchestra performance of Carmina Burana, her last New Zealand role before she left to study overseas. in 2021 New Zealand Opera production of ''Ihitai 'Avei'a – Star Navigator'' She took up a position with Pittsburgh Opera with a two-year contract, which was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing her to return to New Zealand. On her return she sang Lisa in Bellini's La sonnambula, to an audience of 200 in an outdoor performance in Days Bay near Wellington staged by Rhona Fraser. After working for some years on the part with composer and musician Tim Finn, she played the role Purea in the 2021 New Zealand Opera premiere of ''Ihitai 'Avei'a – Star Navigator''. All three performances sold out, and she was praised as "one of Aotearoa’s most glorious sopranos." In 2021 she performed a "vivacious" Zelina in Wellington Opera Company's production of Don Giovanni, and Marzelline in an Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s concert performance of Fidelio. recognising her “track record, talent, determination and potential”. The award, funded by Joan Egan through the Dame Malvina Major Foundation, supports the career development of talented young opera singers handpicked by the Foundation. Wilson says her favourite roles are Adina in The Elixir of Love, which she understudied for in the New Zealand Opera production, and Susanna in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, which she performed in San Francisco (especially the final aria "Deh vieni, non tardar"). She is a light lyric coloratura soprano, with a voice suited to the Italianate operas of Donizetti and Mozart. == References ==
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