Amelia in the Big Smoke

You’ll remember we reported 18-year-old Amelia Bland was selected for the Opera Australia 2019 Regional Vocal Scholarship program, incredibly, one of only four high school students in regional Australia.

That week has now come to an end and Amelia described it as an ‘incredible experience.’

“Over the week we had various different coaching sessions which ranged from vocal coaching, acting coaching and language. These were to help us as we prepared for a recital we performed at the end of the week. I really enjoyed the language coaching because I was given a new way of looking at a piece before I started learning, it gave me some tools that I can take into the future for my career.

No stranger to the opera, Amelia said, “My Grandma and I go to the opera ever year, it’s a thing we do, but this has been an eye opening experience to come and see how differently things are done here in the city – it’s a whole lot different to regional areas. The biggest difference was that our coaches and those teaching us were directly involved with Opera Australia. I had access to many different things that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise.”

Amelia continued, “They were quite nice, they let us start in the late morning, around 10-11 O’clock. In the morning we would have our coaching, that would go till about 6 in the evening, at the end of every evening, we visited the Opera, either watching performances, dress rehearsals or musicals. It was really cool to see the behind the scenes and how everything has to come together to perform and the amount of work that goes into a 2-3 hour performance, one that we were able to watch was Don Giovanni.”

We would get home at about 10pm and do it all again the next day. Whenever we didn’t have an activity on, we would sit in on each others so we can get the most out of the experience, by the end we were all quite good friends. The week was packed with all things that we enjoy doing so it was kind of hard to feel run down. I came out of the experience with a new mindset as to what my future will look like I guess.”

Amelia will be returning to the big smoke next year where she will attend the Sydney Conservatorium.

“I can’t thank Opera Australia enough for the amazing opportunity as well as the Regional Conservatourim who got me there in the first place. I was very grateful for the opportunity.”

Photo: Contributed